stayjin

I am in Osaka too. If the schedule is good, I can join for the beer too.

Damn, I can't go. I have very few leave days left for this year at my day job.

Hi Bemmu,

I am not sure if this will be of any help, but I have noticed there is a fashion trend among some young people, mostly girls, to dress like babies, you know with ping dresses and stripped stockings, baby aprons etc. They always seem to be currying some lollipop-type candy with them. I have seen them in Tokyo/Osaka but it seems very possible that this trend exists abroad as well. They seem to behave like a tribe, so they should have their magazines, events, web-sites.

Maybe if you could get in touch with that tribe and advertise yourself properly there, you may have chances of good conversion there.

I also believe it is much worth to live with a strong faith in the good nature of people.

However I believe one should not indulge in it.

This faith is very precious and this is exactly why it is a sin to rely upon it in the wrong circumstances. I live in Japan, that has a very low crime rate, but I found it very interesting when they told me "Don't leave anything valuable at the office. There is very little chance that something might happen, but can you imagine how you will feel and act towards your colleagues if something happens..." What you value you must protect. Although it sounds controversial, this means that it is your obligation to protect your faith to the goodness of people from the ones that could destroy it.

I read at a financial analysis, that Italy experienced the most massive capital escape of it's recent history, so it is not that _nothing_ has happened, only probably it happened "behind scenes".

I agree that the core problem is the lack of economic unification.

I do not agree with you. As far as I know, the loans did not involve collateral ( at least not until now ), so investors are just entitled profits from interest and have no claim on assets.

I don't know if Greece is a third-world country, but definitely the Greek government managed this crisis are such, so it looks like Greece is going to share their fate.

Yes, that is what I believe too.

Independently of who is going to benefit from what will happen from now on, the Greek government will be forced sell everything that belongs to the Greek people at ridiculously cheap amounts just to pay back the loans...

It has happened before, everywhere that IMF went...

No not THIS Friday, it is scheduled for, Jul 29th Fri at 7pm at the 2F of Shinsaibashi apple store.

I am very sorry, the site is not updated yet (because I didn't have time to get to it yet :( Sorry, things are getting a little crazy with day job recently... )

I guess it is not a coincidence, but just in case that you don't know it already, patio11 is giving a talk at a presentation group we have here called "Design Matters", at the Osaka Shinsaibashi Apple Store. It will be great. Check out http://designmatters.jp/

This group was initiated by Garr Raynolds of http://www.presentationzen.com/ but Garr became very busy, so since last year, together with another guy we run the show.

Yes it is (at least for me it was).

It has to do with the change of perspective. When traveling you usually curry your original perspective with you so it is kind of difficult to see things from another angle while bound for back home.

I guess it depends on how you travel though (the OP sounds like a very serious traveler).

This is so true.

My current work as a system engineer implementing ERP systems for overseas affiliates, takes me often to work abroad (from Japan, that is) for a few weeks a time. Although I don't have time to do almost any sight-seeing at all, and although they will usually have me stay in more or less high grade hotels (that narrow one's vision, because they are the same, everywhere), it is working together with the local operators and managers, eating together, understanding their work ethic and habits, getting their feedback, pushing it together through the transition period, so when I go back I feel I understand a little bit more about the country from these interactions than from whatever I saw during my limited time off work.

Hi thanks for replying, I am in Kobe, close to Osaka. Do you ever come to Osaka, by any chance?

However it is amazing what an impact does living at a place away from were one grew up in have in the perception of the world.

I had already traveled a lot ( as a tourist ) before I left Greece to come and live in Japan, when I started to make a life here, I practically had to rediscover myself. It is not so much the big things, it's the small ones : habits that I took for granted, jokes that do not sound funny, if you can ask someone's phone number... Like a very thin safety net of supporting culture I never new was there just disappeared underneath me.

I also had a fresh view of Greece , and my life before

I think traveling gives you a change of perspective difficult to grasp at home

To be honest, when I read the original idea behind the bitcoin, I was thrilled. I thought This Is It (TM).

The monetary system, as it exists today is based on debt as a lever for growth. Banks can get a deposit of 1$ and God/King/Char/President/Whatever gave them the right to lend 5$ with it, and hold the 5th person under obligation of debt, to pay back that one dollar which the bank that gave it to him DIDN'T HAVE in the first place. You have to give back that 1 dollar or you will lose what you bought with it. Proponents of this practice call it "value" of potential, they argue that banks can do this because if they lend 5$ for every 1$ they have, people who borrow these 5$ will really work their asses off and pay 5$ back, which means that banks valuate the "potential" of the market to create 5$ out of 1$. Then come investors, speculating the value of this "potential", buying the debt and selling it again for 12$ this time etc.

I thought that bitcoin was a chance to fight back the economy of debt. Every coin is 1BTC, no bank would be able to get it and magically transform it to 5BTCs any more. Potential would once again be expressed as ability to produce more or better of your products made for the same cost and EXCHANGE them for more or better products made by someone else, REAL things as assets against REAL things as liabilities exchanged through a non manipulatable medium.

Then, I woke up :) Bitcoin adopters and proponents are so unbelievably vested in the current status quo that they managed to create a caricature of the same, old monetary system replicated in the bitcoin world: exchanges that don't exchange bitcoins but integers, speculators, market crashes... like Wall Street No.2... and naturally "It is not profitable any more, sell"...

This is excellent indeed.

Actually, it might come as a surprise but Greece seems to have a lot of public assets which would give it a much better clear position than many other countries in Europe if they were to be compared.

However of course, it is no secret nowadays that even with a great clear position, if cash flow is not positive you may easily go under.

For me this debate is the monumental evidence that when people get obsessed over something their intellectual openness shrinks to a very small dividend of pi, sorry I meant tau :)

It is not that simple. Have you ever wandered why counties do not have to issue balance sheets at the end of every fiscal year( or at least before every election) ?

Do you understand how easy it would be to judge how a government performed by comparing two of these? And ask all the right questions, exactly as MS investors do with the "developers, developers, developers" CEO?

An honest, yet a little bit provocative, question: The "mainstream" explanation regarding Greek dept is because Greeks are bon viveurs who spent all the money they could put their hands on on drinking and gambling without financial control. Does anybody know any explanation regarding the US debt?

I guess it depends in how you measure those things. A quote I like is: "What one faces in his/her life is destiny. How he/she faces it is personal choice". We are what we make ourselves into. With our last breath we stop fighting for our goals. She is not more or less successful than one fighting to make her monthly wage. She was in a different playground, that's all. If she fought well to get where she is, good for her. If not, well there is not much there for a hacker to admire, is there?

Thanks for the reply. To be honest I am not sure about the exact amounts that went to weapons(, nor "Siemens", nor the companies participating in the "Olympic miracle") but I am sure, like you say that they only account for only one part of the debt. I also do not have the slightest intend to justify or excuse us one bit, we get what we deserve. At the very end, people are responsible for what their governments do, if they are not, they do not deserve to be called citizens and nobody will ever treat them as such. On the other hand, I see debt used as a way to extort resources all around the world, and they look strikingly similar. Look what happened in Brazil, in Argentine, in Hungary, in Turkey, in Indonesia... For sure there are reckless governments, but I believe there are institutions that capitalize on their recklessness.

Exactly. I will put a little more PF (political fiction) to make it a little bit more interesting: How about if your "friend" is a drinker and gambler, but happens to have a big fortune, say islands, nature, ancient temples. So you find his girlfriend and start lending her drinking money out of your heart's "goodness" without managing your loan when it is small, just let it grow... Of course your friend gets drinking money and thanks his lucky stars and all his friends for lending him just to have the pleasure of his charm.... Of course you politely ask him to spend half of that money to buy submarines and fighter aircrafts from your shop. Then one day you go and tell him, "you know your debt is so big, me and everybody else were so surprised by the size of your debt, and really you have been only drinking and womanizing, haven't you... So we decided we will not lend you anymore. From now on you are not allowed to drink, but neither to eat, unless of course you sell to us your telecommunication industry at the amount of the next round of drinks, so what do you say?" It works like a charm, your friend starts getting depressed, and gives in... But then maybe he says, "Look I am grateful for all these drinks and all but you can't in your good sense expect me to sell my property so cheaply just because you were giving gifts to my girlfriend right. I will stop drinking, please stop giving gifts to my girlfriend and wait for a while I will give them back to you. Also I noticed you borrow money for 1% and you lend it to me for 5.2%, that is too much for "friends" isn't it, please be a sport and let me repay it to you with 1.5%." What then?

[EDIT] Disclaimer, I am Greek, I have no illusions about the management abilities of my country (sometimes I think we are born without the part of brain responsible for financial planning ;-), but I have strong opinions about the economy of debt, the way it is manipulated by the "market" and it's implications on the life of people. My opinion is biased, of course.

Last year I've been working on an unconventional idea of mine: After a project at which I was the project manager, I get into a project managed by someone else, as a team member. This has several advantages: -It gives me perspective: manager is a function, not a position or a personality obsession. -I get to see things from the other side regularly: sometimes I find that in the previous project I was managing I have been unreasonable. -I lead by example: people become very motivated when they see me coding or testing ( as a bonus, I get to keep my coding skills sharp :-)

Of course, this is Japan and one can still get the credit for doing work behind the scene but I think it is an interesting idea to hack the "soft boss-hard boss" paradigm

No he isn't. If ( just for the sake of the argument ) RMB replaces USD as the international currency base, US has absolutely nothing to back dollar value and prevent it from dropping.

What I believe he means is that since code is the tool, to code within the programming industry is laboring on the tools themselves, but to code to solve the specific problems of another domain is applying the tools.

Ability to code in another domain gives you leverage for work done IN that domain. The caveat is that knowing ONLY how to code without working knowledge of the domain itself will not get you very far.

It is the irony of the tragic nature of human race: we are both, descendants of Promitheus, who courageously fought for our right to harness greater powers, but also of Pandora who just did not have the maturity to know what NOT to poke,

It is so ironic, there are so many different diets, just to conceal the simple fact that if one eats excessively they will get fat and the simple fact that if one wants to be in good shape, there is a very simple straightforward answer, eat less move more. Instead we busy ourselves with the new " scientific breakthrough" that allows us to be eating bacon all year long and then drink the magic pill and wear our bikini just in time for the miss skinny contest.

P.s. The interesting dude is Odisseas, who before going close ro the sirens, he assessed the risk and decided, to hear their sing but not

I can see your point and I think "the value it creates for people" ( including both developer and customer ) is a good metric for how much it should be priced. The problem is, why should we assume that the price is the only ( or the most relevant ) proxy for "value it creates for people"...

Am I the only one that cannot stomach the idea ( doctrine ) that one should sell his product as pricier as he can get away with or so that one maximizes revenue?

I can understand that when I don't have a clue about how much is my product value, I can probe the market for an optimal price setting, but... but then again I should not be clueless about my niche and my product costs, should I? If I have a concrete plan saying that I need to make 40% profit, why should I take 60%, even if someone is willing to give it to me?

Why can't I say "Well, thank you for your kind offer, but I value my work at this price, this is enough for me to make a decent living, with the extra money please go buy cookies for your kids or give it to charity or whatever."

I mean, I look at myself, making everyday choices about what I can afford and what not, I would like to buy a good quality thing if I can afford it, and the list is usually longer than my affordance... well, my customers are in the same situation like me, they definitely have one more thing they would love to buy with their budget if they can afford it, so why should I take advantage of the fact that they would pay more for mine, if I already make enough?

Like someone before said, does the author know why he was able to sell it at double price? Knowing who his target customers are, should he?

I think thar the most valuable documentation are the commit comments for the version control system you use.

Especially if one uses the incremental iteration paradigm, the commit history together with the code diff IS the documentation of one's code in it's most fundamental way, that is when I changed something, why, what I was ( thinking that I was ) doing etc.

In case that one has to maintain existing code, of course, the whole history is not available but still, refactoring committed similarly documents the evolution of the code in a similar way.

There is a PDF book called "Scala by example". It is a hands on approach that I find very interesting, because you learn by trying out applied cases.

Yes, that was the one I was referring to. Thanks for citing the links.