Category Archives: Text

Johan Cruyff Quotes

Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus. Technique is passing the ball with one touch, with the right speed, at the right foot of your team mate.

Someone who has juggled the ball in the air during a game, after which four defenders of the opponent get the time to run back, that’s the player people think is great. I say he has to go to a circus.

Choose the best player for every position, and you’ll end up not with a strong XI, but with 11 strong 1’s.

In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker the first defender.

Why couldn’t you beat a richer club? I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal.

I always threw the ball in, because then if I got the ball back, I was the only player unmarked.

I’m ex-player, ex-technical director, ex-coach, ex-manager, ex-honorary president. A nice list that once again shows that everything comes to an end.

Players that aren’t true leaders but try to be, always bash other players after a mistake. True leaders on the pitch already assume others will make mistakes.

What is speed? The sports press often confuses speed with insight. See, if I start running slightly earlier than someone else, I seem faster.

There’s only one moment in which you can arrive in time. If you’re not there, you’re either too early or too late.

Before I make a mistake, I don’t make that mistake.

When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball 3 minutes on average … So, the most important thing is: what do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball. That is what determines wether you’re a good player or not.

After you’ve won something, you’re no longer 100 percent, but 90 percent. It’s like a bottle of carbonated water where the cap is removed for a short while. Afterwards there’s a little less gas inside.

There is only one ball, so you need to have it.

We must make sure their worst players get the ball the most. You’ll get it back in no time.

If you have the ball you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don’t have the ball you must make it as small as possible.

Every professional golfer has a separate coach for his drives, for approaches, for putting. In football we have one coach for 15 players. This is absurd.

Surviving the first round is never my aim. Ideally, I’d be in one group with Brazil, Argentina and Germany. Then I’d have lost two rivals after the first round. That’s how I think. Idealistic.

Players today can only shoot with their laces. I could shoot with the inside, laces, and outside of both feet. In other words, I was six times better than today’s players.

Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.

There are very few players who know what to do when they’re not marked. So sometimes you tell a player: that attacker is very good, but don’t mark him.

I find it terrible when talents are rejected based on computer stats. Based on the criteria at Ajax now I would have been rejected. When I was 15, I couldn’t kick a ball 15 meters with my left and maybe 20 with my right. My qualities technique and vision, are not detectable by a computer.

Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.

If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.

Apple iPod Nano 2nd Generation

Planned Obsolescence

In the late 1890’s, a manufacturing plant called Shelby Electric Company based in Shelby, Ohio, produced a 4 watt lightbulb with one main goal in mind. Sustainability. They wanted to make the perfect lightbulb. A lightbulb that would last forever. They wanted to share this with the world. It’s called the Centennial Light. It currently resides in a fire department in Livermore, California and the bulb is still fully functional and still shining. The irony is that it has outlasted all of the lightbulbs in the department as well as several webcams. How is this possible? Surely as technology increases we would have lightbulbs that lasted forever! Why do some only last a couple thousand hours? During the rise of the 20th century, lightbulb manufacturers were beginning to stagnate. No one was buying lightbulbs because the ones they previously bought were still working and there wasn’t a need to buy anymore. The manufacturers had to come up with something to protect their businesses and to keep selling more. In December of 1924, Philips, General Electric, Osram, and others got together and created the Phoebus cartel. It stated that lightbulbs had to have a maximum lifespan in order to ensure repeat business. Lightbulbs that were claimed to last forever were now reduced to 1,000 hours. The manufacturers had to devise a way to make their products weaker. They had to make sure they would break or die after a certain point. This was the beginning of Planned Obsolescence.

Since the Great Depression and the rise of consumerism, planned obsolescence was part of every business model. They had to have it in order to survive. All products even to this day have some form of planned obsolescence attached. In the classic of Death of a SalesmanWilly says, “Once in my life I would like to own something outright before it’s broken! I’m always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it’s on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.” Just a perfect example of planned obsolescence.

iPods unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months

iPods unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months

In 2001, Apple released their first iPod. A couple years later, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company over its batteries. They only lasted a short while and the batteries were ‘unreplaceable’. The Neistat brothers were told when they called customer service that they should just buy a new iPod and that they wouldn’t replace the batteries in them. They launched a campaign called “iPod’s dirty secret” and spray painted on billboards, “iPod’s Unreplaceable Battery Lasts Only 18 Months” with a stencil. Apple had caved in and settled the case and were forced to give rebates and provide warranties for their products. Is this the beginning of the end of planned obsolescence?

Next time, look around at the products you have. Everything you may have may actually have a lifespan and are probably not the best, efficient or sustainable of products.

 

Economic rule: "Nothing produced can be allowed to maintain a lifespan longer than what can be endured in order to continue cyclical consumption."

Examples of planned obsolescence:

  • Ipod's unreplaceble battery lasts only 18 months;
  • Amazon Kindle unreplaceble battery starts to uncharge fast with low temperature;

Economy = economize? (to avoid waste, to conserve)

"The best possible goods at the lowest possible prices."
Cost efficiency creates intrinsic obsolescence.

Product sustainability is inverse to economic growth.

Efficiency, sustainability and preservation are the enemies of our economic system.

The EESC calls for a total ban on planned obsolescence

For the first time, an EU institution is looking into the positive aspects of a total ban on planned obsolescence: more jobs, better consumer protection and a boost to sustainable development. The EESC has today issued an opinion on product lifetimes and consumer information to combat the business strategy of obsolescence.

Bulbs that burn out after a certain time, batteries that run out within a set period or clothes that quickly fall out of fashion are just a few examples of planned obsolescence - products that are designed to stop working within two or three years of their purchase, shortly after the expiry of their guarantee. Replacing these products means using up additional energy and resources, which generates more waste and harmful pollution.

Jobs at stake

Nowadays, obsolescence brings little if any advantage in terms of jobs. “Most of these products are manufactured outside Europe, by underpaid workers,” points out Mr Haber, the opinion's co-rapporteur and a member of the EESC's Consultative Commission on Industrial Change. “If we threw away less, we would have to repair more, creating thousands of jobs closer to home.”

Obsolescence is not always down to wear and tear. By its very nature, the fashion industry, for example, is built around consumer demand for new and different styles not the durability of individual garments. But even here, turnover is becoming faster and new models are often designed to make their predecessors look ugly or out-of-date.

In terms of concrete action, the EESC plans to organise a major European Round Table in 2014 involving all the relevant actors and covering all sectors including industry, distribution, finance, consumer associations and trade unions. The event will also include an open forum to allow EU citizens to express their own views.

Learn to mend

Mr Haber has encountered numerous products that are designed to stop working within two or three years of their purchase – shortly after the expiry of their guarantee. Replacing them means using up additional energy and resources and this generates more waste and harmful pollution. This has already incited consumers in several countries to take action.

The EESC would like to see a total ban on products with built-in defects designed to end the product’s life,” explains Mr Libaert, the opinion's rapporteur and a member of the EESC. He wants companies to make goods easier to repair through the supply of replacement parts, for example. And consumers should also be given better information about a product's estimated life expectancy to allow them to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Ideally, the Committee proposes a labelling system that would guarantee a minimum product lifetime – at present this is not a legal requirement. “Companies need to do a lot of research to guarantee the lifetime of a product and at present they do not do enough,” Mr Haber observes. Furthermore, manufacturers should also cover the cost of recycling if their goods have an expected lifetime of less than five years.

Reasons for action

From an environmental perspective, Europe’s consumption of natural resources has increased by some 50 % over the last 30 years: we consume 43 kg of resources per person per day, compared with just 10 kg per person in Africa. In social terms, the rapid disposability of consumer goods has encouraged purchasing on credit, leading to unprecedented levels of personal debt.

Damage to public health is not only caused by local waste disposal and incineration but also by the practice of exporting waste, sometimes illegally, to developing countries that have less stringent regulations. Culturally, perceptions of in-built obsolescence are eroding consumer trust in industry. Lastly, Europe’s economy is being undermined by imports of products with a short lifetime. “By tackling this issue, the EU would be offering its companies a way of standing out from its competitors by effectively putting sustainability into practice.”

“Our purpose is to help improve confidence in our European businesses,” concludes Mr Libaert. But at the same time, the EESC wants to drive the EU towards an economic transition “from a wasteful society to one that is sustainable, where growth is geared towards consumer needs – with a people-oriented approach – and is not an end in itself.”

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Japan Tokyo Shibuya Crossing

Online Advertising

Online advertising (also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising) is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content.

Global ad spending is expected to reach $600 billion US by the end of next year, according to eMarketer, and grow at an annual rate of about five per cent until the end of the decade. Much of that growth is being fuelled by digital advertising, particularly on mobile devices.

According to a report by PageFair and Adobe, more than 200 million people worldwide have downloaded software that can block virtually all online advertising. But on the other hand if the ads hadn't already become so intrusive there wouldn't be much demand for ad blockers.

The number of people blocking ads increased by more than 40 per cent last year, and it is estimated that blocking cost cash-starved publishers more than $22 billion last year.

People don't mind a subtle add or two but many web pages are so clogged with them that users have no other option then to run ad-blockers.

Relevant and not intrusive ad is a content too.

Examples of the bad ads:

  • Native advertising - ads that pretend to be a regular content
  • Popup
  • Popunder
  • Tricking people with ads that looks like menu items or download buttons
  • Autoplay ads with video and sound
  • Waiting while ad is shown with certain timeout and user is not able to turn it off

Descriptions of the good ad:

  • Ad should be labeled as ad
  • Ad should be relevant
  • Ad should not be intrusive or annoying

Does watching 30 seconds ad video before 10 seconds content video worth it?

Many people think that if they see ads on website - then the product is cheap.

A lot of people think that they pay for internet and they should not see ads at all.

Being online is like driving a car (though far less linear experience). That being so, online ads should feel like sign posts or billboards: it appears briefly in your peripheral vision as you pass, yet you register the message upon it effortlessly. Ads online need to feel this way.

People aren't diametrically opposed to ads - they're opposed to obtrusive ads. They're opposed to YouTube ads longer than the video you're trying to watch, or full-screen pop ups taking over, or 4 different buttons labelled "download" and only one of them real.

Majority of the internet is built on advertising. That's how content providers get paid. There are many site that's take it beyond usable but if people block them, advertisers will be force to become more intrusive. No advertising, no content.

 

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Map copyright trap

In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map who, if caught, would be unable to explain the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map as innocent. On maps that are not of streets, other "copyright trap" features (such as nonexistent towns, or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.

The fictional town of Agloe, New York, was invented by map makers, but eventually became identified as a real place by its county administration because a building, the Agloe General Store, was erected at its fictional location. The "town" is featured in the novel Paper Towns by John Green and its film adaptation.

Mandela Effect – False memory

The Mandela effect is an unusual phenomenon where a large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred.

False memories can sometimes be shared by multiple people. One prominent example comes from a 2010 study that examined people familiar with the clock at Bologna Centrale railway station, which was damaged in the Bologna massacre bombing in August 1980. In the study, 92% of respondents falsely remembered the clock had remained stopped since the bombing when, in fact, the clock was repaired shortly after the attack. Years later the clock was again stopped and set to the time of the bombing in observance and commemoration of the bombing. Other such examples include memories of the title of the Berenstain Bears children's books being spelled Berenstein, the logo of clothing brand Fruit of the Loom featuring a cornucopia,[10] and the existence of a 1990s movie entitled Shazaam starring comedian Sinbad as a genie.

In 2010, this shared false memory phenomenon was dubbed "the Mandela effect" by self-described "paranormal consultant" Fiona Broome, in reference to her false memory of the death of South African anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in prison in the 1980s (he actually died in 2013, after having served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999), which she claimed was shared by "perhaps thousands" of other people.

Examples:

  • Looney Tunes vs. Looney Toons logo
  • "I am your father." vs "Luke, I am your father."
  • C-3PO Has a Silver Leg
  • "Run, you fools!" vs "Fly, you fools!"
  • Pikachu's Tail with black mark or without it
  • "Sex and the city" vs "Sex in the city"
  • Febreze vs Febreeze
  • Sketchers vs Skechers
  • Fruit Loops vs Froot Loops
  • Kit Kat vs Kit-Kat
  • The Flinstones vs The Flintstones
  • "Hello, Clarice" vs "Good morning"
  • 50 US states vs 52 US states
  • Sinbad Never Played a Genie in the Shazaam movie.
  • Tank man did not stop the tank completely in 1989 on Tiananmen Square protects

10 Shocking Facts About Society That We Absurdly Accept As Normal

When you take a moment and look around at the world, things can seem pretty messed up. Take 5 or 10 minutes and watch the 6 o’clock news. Chances are, the entire time, all you are going to see is war, conflict, death, illness, etc. Sure, this is part of the mainstream media’s content strategy to sell drama and keep people focused on it, but besides that, it reveals something real about the current state of our world.

I believe Michael Ellner said it well in his quote: “Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”

Now obviously Ellner’s quote is a simplified way of looking at our current state, but in many ways it’s bang on. Most of what we do in the name of “good” ends up destroying something else in the process and is passed off mainly in the name of profit.

We’ve seen over and over again how our ways have brought us to a point where we are destroying everything in our path, so the question must be asked, isn’t it time for change? Are we fully capable, honest, and determined enough to look at our past, where our actions and thought-patterns have brought us to this point, and now do something completely different in order to restore balance?

The people over at The Free World Charter believe it’s time for that and have put together a list of facts about society we oddly accept as normal.

10 Facts About Our Society That We Oddly Accept As Normal

We prioritize money and the economy over basics like air, water, food quality, our environment, and our communities.

We utilize an economic trading system that facilitates the death of millions of people each year.

We divide the world’s land into sections and then fight over who owns these sections.

We call some people “soldiers” which makes it OK for them to kill other people.

We torture and kill millions of animals every day needlessly for food, clothing, and experiments.

We send children to school for their entire childhood to memorize facts and skills that they will rarely use.

We impose financial pressures on parents, forcing them to miss out on vital stages of their child’s development.

We have thousands of religions, each one believing that their God or god-story is the only true and unique version.

Love and compassion, which promote life, are mocked as facile. Whereas war, which harms life, is seen as honorable.

Anyone with a really useful invention can forcefully prevent others from using or modifying it.

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

2. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are
wrong.

3. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.

4. Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.

5. (Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve.

6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.

8. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.

9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.

10. When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.

11. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.

12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.

13. Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.

14. (Edison's Law) "Better" is the enemy of "good".

15. (Shea's Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.

16. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to
believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.

17. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.

18. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.

19. The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity
is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you've screwed up.

20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.

21. (Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.

22. When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)

23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.

24. It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce
some Structure on it.

25. (Bowden's Law) Following a testing failure, it's always possible to refine the analysis to show that you really had negative margins all along.

26. (Montemerlo's Law) Don't do nuthin' dumb.

27. (Varsi's Law) Schedules only move in one direction.

28. (Ranger's Law) There ain't no such thing as a free launch.

29. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.

30. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Engineering Design) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept.

31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

32. (Atkin's Law of Demonstrations) When the hardware is working perfectly, the really important visitors don't show up.

33. (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

34. (Roosevelt's Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

35. (de Saint-Exupery's Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

36. Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great
engineer designs them to be effective.

37. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.

38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.

39. Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program.

39. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule:
1)  No new launch vehicles.
2)  No new launch vehicles.
3)  Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.

40. (McBryan's Law) You can't make it better until you make it work.

41. There's never enough time to do it right, but somehow, there's always enough time to do it over.

42. Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit because most of the analysis was right...)

*I've been involved in spacecraft and space systems design and development for my entire career, including teaching the senior-level capstone
spacecraft design course, for ten years at MIT and now at the University of Maryland for more than two decades. These are some bits of wisdom that I have gleaned
during that time, some by picking up on the experience of others, but mostly by screwing up myself. I originally wrote these up and handed them out to my
senior design class, as a strong hint on how best to survive my design experience. Months later, I get a phone call from a friend in California complimenting me
on the Laws, which he saw on a "joke-of-the-day" listserve. Since then, I'm aware of half a dozen sites around the world that present various
editions of the Laws, and even one site which has converted them (without attribution, of course) to the Laws of Certified Public Accounting. (Don't ask...) Anyone is welcome to link to
these, use them, post them, send me suggestions of additional laws, but I do maintain that this is the canonical set of Akin's Laws...

Microsoft Office Alternatives

LibreOffice - https://www.libreoffice.org/

LibreOffice is a perfect alternative of Microsoft Office Suite.

  • Free
  • Windows, Mac OS, Linux
  • It can open, edit and save as multiple file formats (including Microsoft Office .doc and .docx formats)

LibreOffice includes these tools:

  • Text Document - alternative for Microsoft Word
  • Spreadsheet - alternative for Microsoft Excel
  • Presentation - alternative for Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Database - alternative for Microsoft Access

Google Docs - https://drive.google.com/

  • Free
  • Online based - all documents saved in your Google Drive storage
  • It can open, edit and save as multiple file formats (including Microsoft Office .doc and .docx formats)

Google Docs includes these tools:

  • Google Docs - alternative for Microsoft Word
  • Google Sheets - alternative for Microsoft Excel
  • Google Slides - alternative for Microsoft PowerPoint

 

Anchoring bias

Anchoring bias occurs when people rely too much on pre-existing information or the first information they find when making decisions. For example, if you first see a T-shirt that costs $250 – then see a second one that costs $100 – you're prone to see the second shirt as cheap.