VJK's Diaries

Davos WEF 2012, or, the highest density of ego's per cubic meter!

2012-01-26T19:37:00.000+01:00

I've been watching Bloomberg TV+ on an iPad recently, and it's kind of an interesting experience as I am staring at my big ass iMac 27 and have the iPad on my left, playing in the background... the moment I hear them show something worthwhile I watch them, and for the rest I'm listening to them kinda like I'm listening to music. Especially on days like yesterday when Apple jumped 6% on the day's trading...

These days Bloomberg runs a show (aka Surveillance) from Davos in Switzerland, at the back end of the World Economic Forum 2012, or the largest concentration of ego's from the world, with political leaders, academics, business leaders, billionaires and if I had to guess plenty of top quality hookers and shitloads of insanely expensive booze. I mean, with all those fora meetings going on during the day, where else would those good men go to please their ego after-hours ? If you have any alternatives, feel free to post your ideas in the blog comments section.

Anyways, let's get serious for a moment. I just saw Bloomberg's Tom Keene, (who tonight hasn't stop talking about his last night's piano bar experience) interview another big shot from Morgan Stanley Stephen Roach. I don't particularly admire economists, and I enjoyed so much being proven right again about my feelings by hearing Roach's responses to Keene's questions. I don't know about you, but here's what I think: if all those big dog economists knew the answer like they all claim they do, how come we are still heading down the abyss at the speed of light?

Keene's question was about Europe and Roach responded with cliché 'usual suspect' arguments that even kindergarden toddlers learn their first day at school. Social unrest, depression in the periphery of Europe, Greece being the 'lost son', and BS like this. Tom said, we know all that, have you got anything new to add? Actually, he said it with more courtesy, but it boiled down to it in effect. And then the wise man from MS responded, well, he said, remember what Papandreou did when he asked for a referendum? If that went through then all Greeks would have said no and that would be the end of EMU.

Now, if someone at the caliber of this particular big shot Stephen S. Roach says something immature, uninformed and plain stupid like this, then what can I say? I might go back to school and earn a degree in economics and then go for the next big thing, a Nobel Prize. I mean, how can someone with the cajones of a so-called Top International Economics Expert can say something like that? Does he really think Greeks are collectively the most stupid people on the blue marble planet and vote 'No' if that referendum went through? One thing I wouldn't call Greeks is stupid. Corrupt? You bet! Irresponsible? Right on! Immature? You bet, again! Seven year olds? Why not? Egomaniacs and egocentric to the level of absurd? Right again! Unethical? For many among them, yeah! But stupid? And vote 'No' to the EMU? Bite the hand that has been feeding them all along? And spend ice cold winter nights without fuel in their central heating burners? Or get no spare parts for their Porche Cayennes anymore? You must be shitting me. Now then. If Mr Roach and other big shots like him can so easily claim what he claims about something so friggin' obvious, I wonder what the value of their claims is in more complicated matters? That's probably why Obama left Krugman out of his cabinet.

Let me give you another example. Big shot Roach said that the Fed's QE policies can do nothing to guarantee long term sustainable economic growth. What did it do to the economy? he asked. OK, it brought down unemployment to 8.5%. But that's a long way from 5-6% being considered as a yardstick for growing economies.

Well, call me stupid, but I don't know how can someone still believe in these unemployment numbers. First, automation brought about an enormous productivity improvement the last 40 years. Tens of millions of jobs were lost due to that. The economy became global and the West decided to outsource their industries to low-cost labor Asia. In the meantime, Agriculture is getting killed in the Western world and increasingly exported to the third world too. At the same time desperate third world immigrants are flocking to the West to find their (mis)fortunes there. And aggravate an already disastrous situation. How could anyone expect unemployment to fall to 5% under these conditions? It could happen if we were forced to retire at 55 and work 3 days a week. And the rest of the time we spend in leisure so that new jobs are created in the leisure services sectors. Or the governments create new jobs for their electorates in the thousands again (like PASOK did in Greece) to self deceive themselves and their citizens about reaching ideal unemployment figures all over again. Well, I'm sorry, but this ain't gonna happen. Probably only Germany will maintain a healthy balance from a classic economic theory point of view because they have been capable in maintaining their know-how in-house and haven't kicked out their best of class industrial production to the third world the way the rest of us have done.

What is the conclusion? For the economy and it's traditional cliché indicators? I'm sure Roach and his peers in this world will continue their lives enlightening us with BS, while sipping their cocktails at the piano bars in Davos during the months of January. And passing arguments about the beauty of the emperor's new clothes. As for the actual economy of the people and by the people? We better start getting used at unemployment figures closer to 10% than 5% or there's something wrong with our thinking. I reckon...

The saga continues

2012-01-24T22:48:00.001+01:00

Apple did it again. It became routine indeed to repeat this every quarter (blow-out quarter like Jobs called them), but with too much awe to leave unnoticed today, too hard to believe. See their just announced numbers right here! What can anyone say? Wish I could watch Monkey boy's face hearing this in Seattle about Apple doing in a quarter 3/4 of what his humongous company does in a year. Just remembered his reaction when Jobs announced the iPhone few years back! He was laughing like an idiot, assuming for sure that his opinion meant anything to anyone! Such a dick-head. I don't know where the Apple stock is gonna climb to in tomorrow's trading, but they sure had a killer quarter. 13.87 bucks earnings per diluted share! They must have almost 100B dollars in cash in the bank as we speak. They could buy bloody Greece for all I care! St-Steven, RIP. You were da man, dude! Screw 'em all Google Android copycats, Samsung, Motorola, and Mickey Mouse Microsoft/Nokia comedians. Apple is here to stay!

Heroes

2012-01-24T22:27:00.001+01:00

HEROES - Images by Michèle Sennesael

I saw her in a box selling her pictures to save those children in Central and South America. Her photographs exquisite! Her goal divine. I'm fully supporting her. I wish I could buy all her photographs.

Multimedia reinvented, or, how to publish in today's world.

2012-01-20T20:45:00.003+01:00

Apple announced iBook 2.0 yesterday and it boils down to publishing books with enhanced interactivity on iOS devices using touch gestures, like most of us with iStuff are used to. The things that are possible on the new iBook app were possible in online magazines for some time and in other platforms for years, almost as long as I can remember. Problem was the authoring tools used were kinda technical and it wasn't easy to built something descent if you were a casual user. So Apple took their iWork tools and modules and libraries and components and created some new ones and there you got iBooks Author 1.0.

You can use it to create smart interactive online books and publish them on the Apple store for money. Or you can just create your own nice little book that you want to share with friends who have iPads too. Building such books is rather easy, if you think hierarchically, meaning, in terms of chapters, sections, and paragraphs. TOCs are created automatically and most of the rest you need to do is either drag and drop or copy 'n paste. I transferred a 100 page two language book from InDesign to iBooks Author in a matter of a few hours. Of course the result wasn't too interactive, as interactivity was not desired in that particular case. The use of InDesign in my case was purely coincidental. It could have been a Word document or even a plain vanilla PDF. Copy, highlight a text container's Lorem Ipsum bla bla bla, paste and Bob's your uncle. The Author creates as many pages as necessary to accommodate your content and there you go. Next Section.

The fun part is when you connect an iPad to your authoring station (a Mac something). While you're editing on the Mac, you can preview in almost real time the result on the iPad. And you can use your cute little finger and do some gestures to check whether your intended interactivity works as desired/designed. Authoring with iBooks Author also involves embedding a number of widgets that help you build quite sophisticated interactivity. Sort of. You are only limited by your imagination. For sophisticated authors, they have allowed low-level code intervention with HTML (5 I'd reckon) to build custom and cooler interactivity. I can live without though. Too old for that.

Submitting an ebook to Apple for publication requires an extra level of complexity that I decided not to pursue after receiving to my face a statement like I couldn't download (in Europe?) a certain facility necessary to submit the source files to them*. I hope they make the process easier, like Amazon's Kindle submissions, for instance, that also seven year olds are able to do. It took me less than half hour to prepare a doc per their specs including cover, decide commercial conditions and publish a book in Amazon Kindle, that took another half day by themselves to approve and put live in six of their sites over both sides of the pond. Well done Amazon. Real money makers 'long tail' style.

Nowadays, publishing books at the lowest possible cost and maximum quality is a piece of tiramisu, if you know what I mean. At least if you are a little proficient with software and computers, that is. Not at a PhD level, mind you. Just Sixth grade stuff.

I use two services for printing books. The one I used when I first printed a photo album for myself (Apple) I don't touch anymore because they are insanely expensive. Great quality but too costly for what you get. Also, they don't offer a market where you might by accident sell some books, like I did once to someone who liked a book of mine about Paris-La Defense and the Cartier Latin. The two I'm using nowadays however are Blurb and Lulu. (Jeez, what's wrong with online book printers who select brand names like for braindead...)

Blurb is good quality for photo books, but their binding is often kinda cheap. I had books fall apart. Their papers and printing however are super! You make books for Blurb either by using their own Booksmart software, or online, and since recently via the Beta version of Lightroom 4.0. The latter is based on an embedded pretty neat module from Blurb and is well integrated into Lightroom. Booksmart is far more flexible, and one thing I noted was that a book I did with Lightroom wasn't salable in eBook for iPad format. Maybe I did something wrong. When you create and upload books with Booksmart this has never been an issue. At Blurb, you can also create your own content file in PDF format (with InDesign for example) and Blurb tells you what to pay attention to, but I have not yet tried that. I have only done this with Lulu.

Lulu is for pro's. You need to know stuff like InDesign to create proper PDFs of the final documents and you also need to know imaging stuff like Photoshop to create your own covers. Their proposed cover design facility is probably OK for most people, but not for eclectics like myself. The interesting thing about Lulu is the low production cost, the discounts, the large variety of book sizes and qualities and formats, and the fact that they are built for large retail distributions. They'll supply to you free ISBNs at your heart's desire, and they'll be the middle man to sell your books via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. They'll also do marketing for you if you pay them a fee. They are really good. I just helped a friend publish a book and it all went pretty smoothly and was highly professional. They even pushed the book references to the Google search engines.

What is the conclusion then? Well, anybody with creative talent who'd like to sell his/her written works worldwide and make them known in far broader and geographically distant markets can do that today at a minimum cost. You don't need to look for expensive editor houses, spend a fortune in marketing and begging them to accept your stuff, and hope they'll sell just because they are called Penguin, or McGraw. Of course these lads have earned their merits and I wouldn't dare minimize their importance, but I am looking at the Internet as an engine that flattened the world of Publishing to quote the "World is flat" author. Democratization of media, genuine meritocracy and may the best win.

I came across a 'writer' like this who made a fortune publishing his works online, without the help of Editors. He's only got someone to design his covers, he sez. Not too glamorous either, I may say. Like first gen HTML homepages sort of thing. He claims he sold 700 thousand ebooks most of them via Amazon and he's probably made for himself the best part of 5M bucks. I read samples of his content and I wouldn't say he's any close to make it to Stockholm in December any time soon, if ever. However, he's making a living out of his loft literally, in front of PC or Mac, and with his imagination full of cheap plots that sell in the thousands. Good for him. Not everyone is born to be a Hemingway or a Neruda, right?

UPDATE: I took the courage to try and eventually upload a textbook (that's the name they give to interactive books at Apple). At the time I didn't know Textbooks were only for the US, at least the said so for the time being. I don't know what that exactly means because I already downloaded that free super trooper 'Life on Earth' by E.O.Wilson that they showcased even at the Guggenheim last Thursday. Anyways. Mine was a simple book with a number of stories and few strophes arranged in two chapters, plus one review chapter (for testing students to see whether they read the book). It was real fun preparing it with iTunes Author, I'd have to give them that! Then I decided to publish the package. They forced me first to become an iTunes Connect member (understandable) and I used my Belgian iTunes Appleid (they actually need an id related to a valid Credit Card). Forgot to mention, there's two types of memberships. One to send free books to iTunes and another to send them books for which you wanna charge dough for downloads. For revenue generating uploads of your books, you needed a United States IRS id number (I thought they called it EIN), even if you never intended to reside in the US in this life. I tried to get one of those but US Civil Servants are resting on Sunday, so the online registration module didn't work. I decided to try the free downloads account instead; one that you can use to donate your wisdom to the world as altruist as you are.

I first had to download an app, aka iTunes Producer (sic), that actually access the package that the Author creates when you hit the 'publish' button, and further adds metadata about your upload, like descriptions, author names, editor names, screenshots, etc... and if all's well it sends it to the cloud in a heartbeat. I messed up a few times with the screenshots because it needs well specified resolutions to be accepted (three I believe from those related to the iPad monitor max pixels) and eventually I passed their local validation asset testing, and the package lifted off! A few minutes later I logged in iTunes Connect and tried the "manage your uploads function", but my book wasn't there yet. About ten minutes later it popped up. Fine. Now I knew Apple had the book in its possession and it looked ok. I could also disable distribution to anyone, if I wanted to. Of course, I wanted to get my hands on it via the Store for Textbooks, but there it stopped. The book is nowhere to see... Do they validate it with humans once more before they release it? Probably... who can say. I'd have to go dig on the net to find out how it works next. I decided to drop a line to their support dudes to find out quicker. It's then that I saw that textbooks were only available in the US for the time being (search me what that means).

Anyways, so far so good. I'll probably have to wait a few more days for another update here about whether this thing will ever be searchable and downloadable to everyone's iPad or not?

Of daughters and children...

2011-12-19T15:13:00.002+01:00

I picked this pic on the net. It's called 'Greek Children'. I reckon it was

shot by a foreigner to be called like that.

Years ago, a Greek friend told me laughing. "Did you know that our daughters are not our children, in Greek?" Knocked out by his peculiar statement, I am like, "WTF do you mean?" "Well", he continues, "if you got a daughter and a son and somebody asks you about kids, you got to answer: I got a daughter and a child. The boy is the child, not the girl. Girls are no children. Can you believe that?"
Cross my heart, I was born and lived in Greece until I left for good at 23, and I never heard that before. I didn't believe the statement anyways. All these years I thought of it as a Greek joke of some sort. Until yesterday.
Sunday, December 18th, 2011 am, the Greek Deyteron (103.7 FM) radio station, with programs mainly for the very few eclectic Greeks still left on earth (kinda not like me!), has been broadcasting traditional Greek fairy tales, old and new. I didn't pay much attention really, because I guess fairy tales are for children (except for something I'll comment later), but all of a sudden the daughter/child issue popped up again. The radio speaker, a woman in her forties I reckon, mentioned the following "...and that would be fine for the two daughters and the three children of the family". Busy with my daily razor saving at the moment, I almost cut myself! I was like "Say WHAT! Oh, shoot, it's gonna be true after all! I can't fokkin' believe this!"
This morning, I happened to be reading the blogpost of an author friend who's been writing for years short stories and poetry inspired by the Greek tradition of the North, namely Thrace. Somewhere in her text I read: «Αυτά, παιδι μ’, όλοι τα ξέραν κι όλοι τάφτιαχναν για τα κορίτσια και τα παιδιά.» Translated "These, my child, everyone was aware of, and everyone knew how to make, for their girls and children.” I'l be damned. Third time good time. It's therefore true! Greeks are male chauvinists then, just like the Chinese! Women don't count much to them, other than their own mother, I reckon. The rest of them women, they hold in contempt. Like the Saudi's that is, and some Swiss until recently ?!?! I am OK, you are not NOT OK sort of thing. Well done folks! Gotta be proud of yourselves...
As for the fairy tales that I promised you, it's not the first time I've been listening Deyteron radio broadcasters narrate fairy tales to see what they teach Greek juveniles in their early days, during their more sensitive and character forming years.
The story I heard yesterday, during my morning bathroom rituals, was about a superbly beautiful girl that was hated by her sisters, and they brought her a poisoned pie to eat. She gave a piece to her beloved dog first, and the dog ate and passed. The girl realized the evil intent and locked her house. The two evil sisters returned with a poisoned ring this time. In vain they tried to convince her outside the locked doors to accept the ring, saying that their mother swore them to pass it to her when she came of age, and that they wanted to fulfill that promise, otherwise the mother would not rest in heaven and they, the two evil bitches, would be cursed for ever. The beautiful girl believed them again, open the door and accepted the ring, but as a soon as she put it in her finger she fell unconscious and appeared like dead. During the night her fairies arrived and saw what happened, and mourned and cleaned her, and put her in a golden coffin. Days later, a prince passed by and saw the coffin and liked it. He asked for it and brought it to his palace, but he had to swear not to ever open it, or else... But the prince got ill in his deathbed and before he was about to pass he insisted that his servants open the coffin to look inside. They did as he wished and he then saw the beautiful body of the 'dead' with the poisoned ring. He pulled the ring off her finger and she suddenly woke up. Her beauty cures him and he asks her to marry him. She accepts but also explains what happened with the pie and the ring that she got from her two evil sisters, and the prince in rage decides to go find them and punish them as they deserve. But the beautiful girl begs him to forgive them... and they lived happily ever after...
Now, it's not about the bleeding story. See what happens in the plot? There's always an evil person, preferably among those you'd suspect the least, from inside your own family, who envies you and wants you dead. Lies come next. The evil sisters would lie so skillfully that would lead the unsuspecting beauty to her death. Then comes the lack of punishment. Forgiveness by the good and innocent for the evil and corrupt. Crimes get unpunished because our Christian heart must forgive our enemies. What a pile of BS is this!
Greek juveniles are raised with fairy tales like these. What do you expect them to become later then? Good ol' fokkers, taking advantage of their own family, stealing from their bros and sisters, and expecting forgiveness for the evils they did. No wonder Greek churches burst with people these days. Great Christian Gods and Saints will forgive you lads. You'll definitely meet St Peter on your way to Paradise. We won't forgive you that easy though. Learn to live and work with some elementary ethics, because you ain't seen the worst coming to you yet. Start by telling proper fairy tales to your kids. To raise them less arrogant, less corrupt and with far lesser nerve and far more dignity than your parents raised and spoiled you. And try to forget your beloved Metapolitefsis Andreas the Great (Megalos) who will go down in your history as the greatest State f*cker of all times.
And stop calling only your boys your 'children'. Because without your daughters, there wouldn't be any boys for you to call 'children' anyway! Didn't you know that yet?

Xmas market in Ghent

2011-12-17T18:09:00.001+01:00

kerstmarkt Gent, a set on Flickr.

Photographs shot just a few hours ago...
Xmas week 2011

Oudenaarde by night, few weeks before Xmas.

2011-12-11T22:10:00.001+01:00

Xmas candy for all...

Freezing cold but I promised a friend that I'd go shoot the town by night to show-off its 2011 Xmas decoration. I was supposed to display the city in holiday season fun and joy, but I ended-up showing it in cold sadness... empty, with just lights in all colors, and with a dominant yellow orange atmosphere that turns your eyes teary... no people to talk to. Not even a stray dog! Only some suspicious characters wondering what this nutcase with a big-ass DSLR in his hands was actually doing at 9 pm on a Sunday night, in the empty streets, under freezing temps.. 'Get a life, dude' might have been their most likely thoughts during those moments of strange encounters. And they were darn right! But a promise is a promise. And promises must be kept... Enjoy the shots. And if you prefer a slideshow with an exquisite background sound, try this....

A walk around Oudenaarde

2011-12-10T20:51:00.001+01:00

A walk around Oudenaarde, a set on Flickr.

Went downtown to shoot the Xmas decoration, but not much was there or interesting. So I shot city landscapes instead. In town and at the park Liedts, a few steps away from my dentist's lab. Lots of ducks in the dark waters of the ponds. Reflections were golden and silver. Trees were naked and only a few kept their leaves still hanging on their branches. There was sadness in the air, mainly because of the winter sun hanging low above the horizon despite the time of the day - a little over noon.

In Bruges...

2011-12-06T12:48:00.001+01:00

Brugge, die schone... A photobook by Vassily Kritis | Make Your Own Book

Let's get movi(e)ng

2011-11-26T10:47:00.001+01:00

Maria Toloudi, a good friend from my Greek past, from when we attended high school together, started recently a personal blog under the title 'Let's get movi(e)ng'. She is basically a sophisticated cinephile, as well as part time author of short stories, immensely compact with profound depths, that she occasionally publishes in a local magazine. She also recently started posting her stories (in Greek) in her other blog too (Νοιάζομαι). I have commented on her fiction writing style in a previous blogpost of mine, as some of you may have read.

In her recent personal blog she decided to post some of her unpublished short stories, but she mainly focuses on reviewing various recent movie productions that happened to touch a chord inside her mind and soul.

As we all know, in the sphere of cinematic productions, there is a large spectrum and multiple shades of gray of movie critics. Most actually provide a summary of the film script to conveniently fill-in a few paragraphs of their review, and further narrate a few key and cliffhanger scenes of the production; however, in their intent to appeal to the simple minds of the reader community, they often remain on the upper surface of what meets the eye in the two hours of movie attendance in a theater. Others conveniently copy what celebrity critics have already written and defended before. Indeed there are leading critics who either elevate a production to unseen heights of praise or dig it deep in the abyss of cinematographic incompetence. However, many film reviews are far from objective, and are virally planted in the media channels for commercial reasons, funded by the large production houses in the process of their new film market awareness and marcoms campaigns. A recent example of such is a quite negative review on Clooney's The Ides of March by a renowned New Yorker Magazine critic, however the marketing machinations of the funding houses behind ladykiller George's work have made sure the grand public worldwide got a far more distorted view of the reality. And the movie was presented as a 'must see'. Only time and history will show who's right and who's wrong.

Maria is a far more complex film reviewer than those described above though. As she does this for fun, she wouldn't care less if she decided to dig literally six feet under a production that most media praised to the gates of the movie heaven. She is simply genuine and expresses her perception of the truth after a deep study of her own feelings and ideas/concepts a given production have triggered inside her mind and soul. She writes her critics for fun, like I said, in order to share with friends and cinephiles alike her far deeper thoughts and profound ideas about the motives and intents of the movie director. You practically need to have actually watched a movie in order to grasp the deeper meaning of her arguments and ideas. Maria likes to explore ideas in the movie creator's mind far deeper than anyone I know, and she experiences things that mere mortals like the rest of us wouldn't even see if they hit us in the face. In that sense reading her reviews creates an entirely new experience as you suddenly discover things you haven't realized earlier, to the point you decide to watch the movie again, and either approve or challenge her proposed ideas and perceptions.

She once told me she wants to state the facts as she experiences them by watching a movie, but she nevertheless abstains from trying to impose her own personal opinion on a reader, allowing the space to him/her to create his/her own ideas and interpretations. In that sense, she basically turns her reviews into brain teasers, the short of thing intellectuals often love to make us deal with.

One such review she recently wrote was about Nanni Moretti's movie Habemus Papam (2011), a rating of 7 in IMDB. She basically framed Moretti's profound intent behind this production in four key concepts: Church, Science, Personal Responsibility and (Societal/Personal) Limits. Those four parameters, she claims, become the 'fil rouge' throughout the movie. She often comes back to them, to demonstrate her thesis in subsequent paragraphs of her review. Especially the parameter of human Limits becomes her perception of the Moretti's magic concept in his movie.

She also develops the idea that Moretti made the use of a 'Deus ex Machina' reference to 'theater' at the back end of the movie to 're-establish' the limits, as she puts it, and return to the socially accepted 'order' of things by requiring the characters avoiding being themselves, but 'pretend' instead, as like being theatrical actors (and I am not even sure I have properly represented her deeper interpretation behind that particular paragraph). It's an interesting point, especially in the light of many other Habemus Papam reviews, in which Moretti is being negatively painted for this particular reference to 'theater'. She would have loved to hear Moretti himself clarify his intents behind that part of the movie, she told me.

It's a pity her reviews are only written in Greek and cannot, as such, be experienced by aliens... It is also the kind of Greek prose that is extremely hard to translate to another language (she often uses a sort of post Alexander the Great Hellenistic Greek sentence constructs, however built upon contemporary spoken Demotiki Greek). Even for native Greeks, it is often quite puzzling to see through her various sentence constructs, what she really set out to mean. She's a strong believer that an eclectic writing style, the one that touches the frontiers of good literature and art, should provide lots of space unfilled, and with occasional gaps, in order to allow room for interpretation. In that sense she writes in a style that is reminiscent of Ancient Chinese texts and the idea behind Far Eastern ideograms that only assume their final meaning and correct interpretation in the presence of a particular context. I wouldn't be surprised to see most of her readers actually read her texts over and over in order to make sure they understood well what she really meant. In that sense, both her film reviews and short stories prose are quite challenging to grasp and require a descent amount of energy to understand... quite a bit of mental energy indeed. She wouldn't care less though, if you told her that for this reason her work would have difficulty to get a 'commercial' approval stamp. And her books to become best-sellers. She would care even less if her work's fog index required PhD level of a trained mind to grasp its deeper meanings. In fact she enjoys how that experience alone, when admitted by her readers, ends up stroking her own ego and gives her a sense of achievement of the goals she set out to address...

Wenn die Sonne der Kultur tief steht, werfen selbst Zwerge lange Schatten

2011-11-05T23:22:00.000+01:00

An emotional Papandreou at the conclusion of the
winning confidence vote

When the sun of culture is low, even dwarves will cast long shadows (German aphorism attributed to Karl Kraus). I was thinking of this the entire week after George Papandreou took the world by surprise by his infamous referendum proposal. Initial reactions of many has indeed been too harsh to be described in any politically correct blog, potentially attended by nuns and minors.
WTF was he thinking? Why did he do something like that! Sarko and Frau Merkel almost had a stroke. Obama pulled loudly a large number of 'WTF's out of his larynx. Luxembourger His Master's Voice JC Juncker barked like a chinchilla to frighten the Greeks once again. Poor sod Baroso and geriatric looking Van Rompuy rushed to add some compromising and much too useless statements too.
'Professional' politicians got really scared, you see. A referendum for ratification of the most recent funding proposals? Are you friggin mad? Ask the Greeks, who already seen so much happening to them the last 24 months, and are now up against the coldest winter in their life whether they'd like to accept the big dog solution? What do people know? You see, in countries of law and order, citizens are generally much too thick! Like seven year olds. They should always be told what to do. And pay taxes for being told and guided. That's the essence of Democracy, my darlings. The ruling class of politicians will decide what's good for the people, right? Referenda are only made for the Swiss and the Golden Age Greeks. Not for 'Democratic regimes' Western Hemisphere style! What are you talking about Mr. Papas? Who told you Democracy is about the people? Didn't you ever hear the aphorism of all Democratic leaders of the world "We are all equal in a Democracy, but most of us with careers in the political ranks are more equal than the rest of you, poor bastards!" With his referendum trick Georgie boy called their bluff in one single coup and uncovered the chronic lying of all those with career in politics, domestically and internationally, faster than you can pronounce Pa-pa-ndre-ou. Them raging wolves threw away their sheep furs and divulged their very own cynodont nature! Well done, Yorgo. You are an act of genius, my nigger! Despite the countless execution wrongs you've done during your last few years in government as a PM. I raise my hat to you, you dog...
Eventually the referendum was pulled back by George following his own party peers' outcry, and the opposition's dog's howling about snap 'elections'. Who needs 'elections' anyways? At least in China they mean something much more interesting when we hear them say 'iˈlekSHən'. However, the issue and necessity of a vote of confidence by the National Parliament remained, and by the early morning hours on Saturday November 5th, Papandreou, was able to maintain parliamentary confidence in his government's position, despite minor defections in his own party. In parallel, by virtue of this confidence vote, he also obtained factually the approval of the majority of the people representatives for the funding remedy provided by the European big dogs in Cannes on October 27th.
All these days leading up to the vote of confidence, we saw countless 'dwarves' parading and showing their real faces with Byzantine type intrigues deploying about the matter, pulling knives on Papandreou's back unheard of in the history of mankind. Interesting truth: An unusually large number of female MPs jumped out of the woodwork to show their heels (not to mention any other body part of theirs, starting with 't', for risk of my being accused as anti-feminist). Apparently Greek women get promptly sacrificed by the genuine bandits inside their political clans, the Mafia Godfathers, because in a macho country like ours it is indeed quite manly and very heroic to 'burn' a woman on the altar, and maintain the play to the benefit of the wicked. I can't help but think of the Lennon lyrics here: Women are the niggers of the world. Greek women certainly are. In any case, the half dozen 'dwarf' women that I am referring to, with names I have only heard in relation to events of questionable ethics in the past (oh, yes, the party political pimps engaged tarts to do their dirty laundry, and then deny they even knew anything about it, not?) have yelled the smelliest bullshit arguments I heard of, totally unrelated to the real issues at hand. These are namely the GDP shrinking, lack of a real plan for boosting the economy, inability to shrink budget deficits, shortcoming of tax income in covering continuously haircut expenditures, and lack of human capital trained to produce economic output that'll start slowly but securely to reverse the tide.
Papandreou was literally massacred by the media and the politicians all over the world, but especially by his fellow peers, own party members and opposition. Everybody who had a mouth had an opinion, and shouted it loud. Most of the outcry came of course from the opposition, with Antonis Samaras of the Conservative party Nea Democratia barking like a mad dog and already behaving like the next PM. A worst exhibit of true incompetence, genuine egocentrism and total indifference with respect to what is best for the country I have never witnessed before in my life (except for Russ Limbaugh and Glen Beck, but at least these two nutcase will never assume governing authority, even in their wildest dreams).

On cloud nine with Airplay...

2011-10-16T12:08:00.001+02:00

Have you folks tried the new Airplay yet? Of course you need an iPad (both gens will do), or an iPhone 3GS, 4, or 4S, or even an iPod Touch of the last two gens, and of course an Apple TV 2nd gen. The latter is of course HDMI connected to your big ass HDTV. Oh, yes, you'll also need a home Wifi LAN to interconnect all your Apple gear with one another. Good to know, making Airplay work for you is PC/Mac independent (that means, you won't need either a Windows or a Mac lap or desktop to make all this work. So, Windows folks, rejoice! Xmas time!).

Sounds like much? Not really. Many among you already own this equipment. You wouldn't be coming to this blog if you didn't. Right? With iOS 5 offered by Apple to upgrade all these devices this last week, you can hardly believe the eyecandy you are getting by mirroring a mobile iOS device's monitor to your 40+ inch 1080p HDTV screen. It all works like a charm. Almost orgasmic.

Actually, you first need to upgrade all your iDevices to iOS 5.0, and do the latest update to your Apple TV too. All you got to do next is enable Airplay on Apple TV. Look for the settings and spot Airplay. Turn it on by clicking once. Forget the password. That is only meant for the security obsessed among you. On your iOS 5 upgraded device next, you double click your home button, and you swipe to the right the open apps row at the bottom of your screen. Provided your Apple TV is on and at the same home Wifi LAN, you get to see the picture above. This example is actually captured on my iPad.

The symbol on the right of the 'Next Track button', with the popup window above it, is where you enable Airplay and Mirroring. You pick up the Apple TV (in this case called Living Room Apple TV), a tick shows up, and off you go. If your HDTV is tuned to your Apple TV, you can watch on it whatever appears on your iDevice (iPhone, iPod, iPad). Well, almost. For instance picture zooming by double-tapping them in the Photo app is not taken over by the mirroring. Also, some apps, when they realize that Airplay is on, send their content to Apple TV and display a subsequent message on the iDevice. iPlayer (BBC) and TED worked like this for me. BTW, TED is superb to watch with Airplay. I just watched a show about Liar Spotting! Cool! iPlayer would be huge as well, if BBC didn't fuck up in their last update and left all their shows soundless. Well, we gotta wait for their next update to fix this. I'm sure they know by now and working on it. If you can't live without the BBC iPlayer shows, don't upgrade your stuff yet.

This mirroring function is pretty cool. Above all, you don't need to physically attach your iPad with a HDMI cable to your TV anymore, unless you got no Apple TV yet. But Apple TV is gonna be one of your best investments in the present century, so go out and buy one. You'll remember me.

Second, it's great for playing videos, or live TV with apps like BBC's iPlayer, Hulu, Netflix or whatever is available in your part of the world. Stuff like TED look really stunning with mirroring. And of course photographs and your own videos. Also, it's great as as educational tool to demo apps and how-to's to a larger group of apprentices goggling at your projection screen.

Simply... Cards

2011-10-16T08:20:00.000+02:00

One of the apps Apple speakers have shown off during the recent event in Cupertino was Cards. Not iCards, simply Cards. This time it is indeed Cards, because they are printed in exclusive quality paper, in relief, and mailed to recipients in equally high quality paper envelopes. Apple's cards are very much real! Not virtual like those you can find in the thousands on the net. Most of which find their way distastefully via email and linked URLs to millions of recipients during season holidays and the like.

You may remember, when virtual cards became mainstream, many complained for good reasons, but most of us geeks adopted them like they were the best thing ever since sliced bread. We thought it was a far better way to send wishes since it cost nothing, and it could still be sent last minute, often to a whole group of recipients, as impersonal as never before. Done with it. Over and out.

I have often sent virtual cards as well, I'm embarrassed to admit. But I always tried to create something original, using my own photographs, special font-type, and suitable layouts. I also made them in high res in case recipients wanted to print them. However, this was still unreal, virtual. Sad to think about it.

Virtual cards get eventually thrown in the bin of the personal computer's desktop. There's no way a love-dove can put any silk ribbon around virtual cards coming from a boyfriend's email. Unless she decides to print each one of them in her inkjet at home. How hugely romantic! Anyone in a romantic relationship, who prefers virtual cards to real, should better go to the forest and cut timber instead . Virtual cards lack the most important qualities of the real thing. The look, touch and feel. And the feeling that someone, the very special one is the recipient's heart, has also touched the same card, handwritten the message, and tongue licked and pressed the stamps on the upper right corner of the envelope. Maybe he/she even kissed the closed envelope, and wished it a bon voyage. Also, don't forget the adorable scent of real paper as well. Which might often get sprayed with a few droplets of a loved one's perfume. Am I right or am I right?

Apple's Cards app provides a sort of remedy to this issue in a hybrid fashion. One uses the convenience of the iPhone, and with the help of the app's templates, one composes quite elegant postcards, personalized with photographs from one's own albums, addressed with data from the address book, and sent to Apple's cloud for printing and posting. In-app payment for the postcard's printing, handling and postage completes the cycle, and only thing that's left to do is for the recipient to receive it in the post. It's pretty neat. I printed year-end holiday cards produced in similar ways with iPhoto years ago, and I can assure you the quality of the end product is the best you can possibly get. These cards are rather expensive but they are worth it. Having done this again with the iPhone this time was an entirely different and a far better experience. A much more straightforward process indeed. Ok, the iPhone screen is sort of tiny to really enjoy the creative part of the job, but what counts here is that a high quality output can be achieved in a matter of minutes, even by the most aesthetically clumsy iPhone users in existence.

You might still wonder about what the exact objective of a 100 Billion dollar company was when they set up a whole new diversified business model for printing postcards and mailing them to recipients in the four corners of the world. Well, IMNSHO it is part of His Jobness Grand Vision. Since the days of von Neumann, with exception of Apple, all other personal computer business efforts have always focused upon the community of hackers and technology geeks. People who get high by simply staring at fancy hardware. And software too. You see, it seemed quite wicked to be able to program computers in the early days. You could even get lucky with girlfriends by boasting about your hacking skills. 20th Century romance! Microsoft still believes in that philosophy. Behind the user friendly masks that they are covering Windows with these days, they are still addressing the masses of computer technology addicts and maniacs. Apple ignored those freaks since its inception. Jobs's Apple has always created objects for humans. Simple to use and addressing every day needs where real emotions are important. I'll ask again. Is Cards a business (profitable or not) for a company like Apple? You're darn right it is. If Cards is one of the little things that makes people happy and helps them remain and feel human, why not then?

BTW, if you wondered how Cards works, look here. These guys did a pretty good job in reviewing the app.

Delete Photos in Photo Stream... not?

2011-10-14T22:03:00.004+02:00

Occasionally, you might wonder. What went through their minds when they implemented Photo-stream? The concept is plain and simple, you reckon. You enable Photostream on all your iOS 5 devices and your Macs (iPhoto and Aperture). So far so good. You shoot a picture on any iOS device and Bob's your uncle. Your Adams Yosemite look alike marvel finds its way to the cloud and then back to your other devices! How cool is this? A blow-away, to quote Forstall.

In each of the iOS devices and on the Macs (iPhoto and Aperture) storage space is reserved under the label "Photo-stream". Your Photographs shot on your iOS devices are placed in there and get synchronized among each other, up to iCloud and down to all the rest...

That's pretty neat. Suppose you are working on your big ass iMac, and you want to embed a shot of an object close to you into the document you're working on. You shoot one with your iPhone or iPod Touch latest Gen, and off it flies to the cloud and back it crawls into your iPhoto or Aperture Photo-stream. You could have alternatively transferred the same picture to your Mac by attaching the iPhone to the USB, but it takes much longer this way. So, all in all, Photo-stream can't be that bad as a new function in iOS 5. Not?

There's a catch though. Turns out there's no way to delete individual photographs inside a photo stream, either on an iOS device or in iPhoto or Aperture. In iPhoto, stream photographs are added automatically in the library, and you can edit them in there to your heart's desire. In Photo-stream however, they remain indestructible as hell. Nothing seems to be able to happen to them. Search me why Forstall and Co decided to implement it like this. Problem is, you may shoot a picture one day that's rather compromising, and of course you'd wanna wipe it out of your device faster than you can scream 'oh, shit!'. How rare would something like that be, eh? Not impossible, right?

There's another issue too. Don't know about you folks, but I am one of those, who when I start shooting pictures, I may end-up with a few hundred shots in a matter of hours. I wouldn't like to flood my iPhone's memory with junk shots, really! Certainly, I can switch off Photo-Stream on the iPhone to avoid getting those in my local stream and in iCloud. Fine, but this is no good. First, I lose all my previous stream pics (that's no big deal since they are normally stored in the roll too), but, second, once I turn on Photo-stream again, I open up my iPhones storage pockets to the contents of the stream in iCloud, and all those puppies fly back in iPhone's stream before I can spell 'Paramaribo'. In other words, back to square one. Stuck again. It's kinda like these pictures are really after you, haunting you... You just can't get rid of them buggers. Why couldn't Apple implement a plain simple "Delete" function yielding simultaneous "Deletes" in the remaining Photo-stream containers? Simple question, innit? Call Forstall!

The only 'clumsy' remedy I found is the following. It involves disabling Photostreams in iCloud and in all iOS devices and Macs. When you do that, all your Photo-Stream pictures vanish to nothingness. Of course, make sure you store those that you want safely somewhere before you kill everything. That's pretty easy, because typically your stream shots also get into your iPhoto's or Aperture's libraries. In there they become mortal again, destructible, deletable!

After this kinda housekeeping gets done, you launch photo streaming again in all your devices, Macs and your iCloud.

You might wonder what should a recommended sequence for shutting down and starting up be. I'd tend to believe that when you shut down Photo-stream, you first start the process in the iCloud (click on your account name, up right, and then select 'Advanced'). You then shut down the streams one by one on your other devices and your Macs. All pictures in those stream storage spaces are automatically deleted and stream containers disappear altogether.

When you restart the stream function though, you work in the opposite sense. You start with the Macs and iOS devices, and then you finally enable your iCloud stream service. The iCloud service is the space where everything gets synchronized from. It's like a traffic policeman directing vehicles on crossroads.

Good luck with all this. It's really simpler than it sounds. No rocket science here. It'd be much simpler though if some bright young lad from inside Apple's iOS engineering troops woke up one morning and sighed, "I'm gonna put a 'delete' button somewhere in the stream, kids"... His Jobness bless him.

The fun of updating to iOS 5...

2011-10-12T20:05:00.001+02:00

October 12th today. D-Day for Mac freaks and alike. I've been watching the blogs all day for the latest on the 5.0 release and find out out when it was supposed to be made available to the Public. Ars Technica was the first to fire a false news flash that pushed our systolic to the highest tens. Eventually it all proved a pile of fresh BS of the finest kind. Once you did like they said you were indeed guided to create your iCloud account but soon you realized that unless you were a genuine and registered 'Developer' you were kinda short of luck. Anyways, I had to wait for some extra hours before anything was possible.

For fun I keep a OS 'Developer' account and so I decided to try my luck via that channel. Initially, no deal whatsoever. I mean, you need to realize, this time it's not just an iOS device update... it's the whole bleeding universe of Apple apps and OS's that need upgrading, incl. iPhoto, iTunes and iWork apps. So, I started with Lion. As a 'Developer' I found the latest Lion version 10.7.2 that is supposed to be the iCloud version. Indeed, after installing, I discovered the iCloud icon in the Preferences and went to set it up. Now what happened next only His Jobness in Heaven knows. I know that I finally managed to move my me.com account to iCloud in just a few seconds, and lost quite a few things in the process (like galleries, etc) and I'll be damned if I knew how to get into my iDisk again, if at all. I know I said somewhere that I needed to maintain it, but who knows. In all my excitement I might have screwed it up.

In the meantime, His Jobness called upon his servant Tim and they both opened the gates of Paradise (no apples left there, Eva ate them all) and iPhone updates were sent to all of us mortals. I just finished (sort of) my iPhone's update, as we speak. So far so good, other that you need to set it up from scratch again (at least that's what you think in the beginning until it asks you for a restore (iCloud or iTunes). But it's cool because it reacts like it doesn't need iTunes or a PC/Mac Connection to be set up (exactly like they announced it). It might intimidate a few Internet immigrants in the beginning (folks of my generation) with all these steps you need to take to get it back in shape, like you left it before the update. This update is pretty big, trust me. 774.4MB were downloaded in iTunes to do that, and I was lucky to get it in just a few minutes with download speeds up to 4MB a sec, until it hit 670MB. Then it slowed down from a superhero to a geriatric turtle level.

Well, bad news. The iPhone was moved to iOS 5 but it failed to restore from my backups. I'll spend the rest of the evening finding out how to do that. If anybody knows how, call me. Pleeeeease!

I'll be damned. Being all in the dark, with my eyes covered with a black cloth and seeing the blackest of blacks all over, I told the iPhone to back-up everything to iCloud instead of to iTunes locally. All of a sudden, all the apps I had on my last version of the previous iOS (4.3.something) and some more (trust me) appeared to be getting to my phone out of nowhere. Bless His Jobness. Hardly buried and already doing miracles to be canonized! I just can't believe how these Apple folks write software. This ain't software! This is sheer magic! Good for any idiot like me and worse, to lead us thru the intricacies of technology innovation of the finest kind. What will eventually happen to this phone once all updates are done only His Almighty Saint Steven knows. Let's all pray together, brothers and sisters!

UPDATE: One of the 'funniest' things I discovered is the non-destructibility of the Photo Stream. You shoot a pic and it's all over your devices, unable to hide or kill. So folks, you are warned. No compromising shooting with iPhones and other iDevices under iOS 5 until the comedians who set this up decide to add a delete button somewhere. It's so hilarious! I'm sure we're gonna have an update real soon. Right now, I can't hold my laughs on this. And no, things don't get worse because of the passing of Steven Paul. It's just one of these things...

Reuters reporting suckz !

2011-10-07T20:03:00.001+02:00

It's not the first time I felt Reuters reporters create articles and TV reports that are immensely biased. You'd expect that Reuters, being one of the most heavy-duty news agencies on the planet, would pay some more attention to their output and will present facts in unbiased ways, reflecting objective truths and not opinions of their staff, which are basically the last thing I'd ever want to hear. Reporters and industry analysts are in general close to being the scum of the earth in every corner of the world you look at, and they usually try to make a name for themselves by systematically offering their usually uninformed opinions to create panic among ignorant crowds, and sell some extra copies of their stories.

The latest charade that Reuters started already last Wednesday, at the news of the passing of Steve Jobs, is about how difficult it will be for Apple to survive, how they will screw up eventually, and how their competitors Google and Samsung will come after them. I mean, the thing that pisses me off is that these half brained idiots (incl. editors-in-chief too) use Reuters' platform to spread their moronic arguments to that extent. Has anyone ever told them that Samsung (or any like them for that matter) ever did anything else than waiting for Apple to show off their next innovation, and then go after them and cowardly just COPY them? Yes sir! Copying is all they can do. That includes Google too, BTW! How stupid are some reporters to pretend to ignore that fact?!?!

I recently saw one of Reuters' TV clips with Rob Enderle (a self-proclaimed industry analyst and Technology consultant) predicting the demise of Apple not long from now. It would start with lackluster innovations (oh, yeah, ever since last Tuesday 'lackluster' became the favorite term of Apple haters to blame the 4S), lesser quality products (implying bad execution), and will be followed by competitors catching up. Incidentally, I happen to have often watched Enderle in Cranky Geeks with John C Dvorak. How pathetically unsuccessful can Enderle be as a technology consultant to be part of Dvorak's cast, only God knows. Anyways... It's so pathetic to watch these guys showing off their egos -- that gig is currently owned by Adam Curry of all people, an MTV disk jockey and self-proclaimed the podcast spiritual father --. the Cranky Geeks cast members are so freakin' opinionated that I wonder how I continued watching them for so long (I guess, I only like Dvorak); probably because I was too lazy to do anything else instead.

I don't claim to be any visionary or an experienced industry analyst myself, or even a mediocre technology consultant, but I betsa, I know enough of ICT myself, and have practiced years-long management of technology companies to know Enderle is a classic case of "if you can't do it, teach it; and if you can't do that either, then become a consultant". I couldn't believe my ears hearing the arguments he used to bury Apple six feet under, together with Jobs. Of course, only time will show who's right. Like time showed in the current sales figures of 100M Apple iPhones a year, when that other comedian Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, commented laughing after the iPhone launch a few years ago, "who will ever go buy a phone that costs north of 500 bucks?". Well I got news for you, dickhead! More than hundred million and counting! How about your own Windows mobile babies that you fathered with geriatric Nokia?

You don't have to read anything at all to know that the iPhone (just to mention one of Apple's wonders) will eventually be the number one mobile phone (it's already the number one smartphone). Anywhere you go in this continent, a bar, a metro, a restaurant, an airplane, a bus, you can't but notice that you are surrounded by iPhone owners. WTF is a Reuters opinion worth then? You got it. Right on the money. It's worth shit!

My personal photographic homage to SJ

2011-10-07T16:38:00.001+02:00

The last tribute by Daniel Lyons, aka Fake Steve.

2011-10-07T16:03:00.003+02:00

For quite a bit of time Daniel Lyons published a blog that was one of the best that ever appeared on the net. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Read all about it in this Wikipedia article. I was a loyal reader until Lyons stopped doing it from the moment a fellow NYT reporter (what a pathetic little weasel) blew his cover.

Since yesterday, when the passing of the real Steve Jobs hit the world news, I started wondering what Fake Steve would do, if anything. I was his blog's a registered reader, and imagine my surprise today, when I got this poem in my mail. I've copied it here but you can find the original print at his blog too.

I have hardly shed a tear yesterday at the hearing of the news. Like I was trying to be 'strong' and 'mature'. Reading Lyons poetry though... I just couldn't hold it. Farewell Steve. Farewell Fake Steve. Both gone for ever!

One last thing: R.I.P., Steve Jobs

by Daniel Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

O shaman,

O wizard,

O golden son of Zeus and mortal woman, you

defied the gods, stole fire

& gave it to mankind.

For this they struck you down.

Bastards!

“One more thing.”

That was catch phrase.

Or was it the one about putting a dent in the universe?

I like them both,

but you have to admit,

“One more thing” is punchier.

Jon Ive says you inspired people

but you could also be difficult at times.

A bit unkind of him, I think.

What genius isn’t difficult?

Picasso was a jerk. So were Tolstoy and Beethoven.

So was Michelangelo, I bet,

though to be honest

I really don’t know anything about Michelangelo

because I missed class on the day we discussed him.

But based on his work

I’d bet he was a total dick.

What beauty can ever be created without pain?

What great art has ever been produced without suffering?

And don’t say “Seinfeld” because (a) that wasn’t

as easy as it looked & (b) twenty years later

it really hasn’t held up as well as everyone

thought it would, has it.

What <em>you</em> did, however,

now <em>that</em>

will be remembered forever.

I don’t mean the products.

The Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

Yes, you invented them

& yes, we have heard of them

but no, Steve Jobs,

your greatest accomplishment

was not some piece of hardware

not some lines of code

not the mouse and the graphical user interface

which let’s face it you really kind of just

borrowed from Xerox PARC

& “borrowed” might not be excactly the right word

for what you guys did

but on this day of all days let’s not quibble

about word choice.

No, Steve Jobs, your greatest accomplishment

is what you did to us.

You gave us joy.

You restored our sense of childlike wonder.

You enabled us to live in a world where

we always believed that something amazing & magical

was just around the corner

and that the future would be better than the past

because in fact,

as long as you were alive,

it was.

Your name, old friend, is the definition of hope.

Not literally, I mean, not if you

look up “hope” in the dictionary,

but you know what I’m trying to say.

And now, with you gone,

what happens to us?

Have we reached our peak?

Our zenith? Our apogee?

Or some other word that means the highest point

you can reach?

I think maybe we have.

Because here’s what I see.

I see

America in decline:

a civilization unsure of itself,

adrift, confused, puffed up

with phony patriotism,

an empire run by number crunchers,

by MBAs & investment bankers

by quick-flippers & angel investors

who make nothing

who build nothing.

But you, Steve–

you flew in the face of that.

You were the one who invented,

who created,

who said no,

that’s not good enough,

go do it again.

Go make it amazing

astounding

profound

perfect

& stop being such a whiny little bitch

because your kid is in a school play

& and you don’t want to work late.

People call you a visionary.

I believe that was literally true.

I believe you had a vision, way back

in the early days,

of where everything was headed

& once you’d had this vision

you set out to make it real,

the way a sculptor sees

a finished statue inside a block of marble

& slowly chips away

until everything unnecessary

has been removed

& the vision becomes real.

Steve, I’m sorry.

I wrote this lame-ass poem

a while ago

because I believed that when this day came

my mind would go blank

& I would not be able to write

& all I would want to do

would be to go out walking in the woods

alone

by myself

not talking to anyone.

I was right.

That’s all I want to do.

In fact that’s where I am right now.

I’m out in the deep woods

where there is

no sound

except

the wind moving through the trees

shaking the high branches

the leaves letting go

drifting to the ground.

I hear my footsteps on the wet path.

I hear my breath

I think of nothing.

I do not want to talk

or write or sing your praise.

I do not want to cry or mourn.

I will not say that life is pointless or empty without you,

because the truth is,

no matter what happens,

life is good.

Too short, of course.

But always good.

So anyway.

Here in the woods, alone,

I make peace with your leaving.

I offer you

one last namaste. I press

my hands together,

& bow to honor

the divine inside you.

I pray you will

forgive me

for going on too long,

& now I promise: no more words.

Because words mean nothing.

Words fall short.

Words scatter like dry leaves,

stirred by the wind,

swirling, rising upward,

tangling with each other,

like some incantation gone awry,

unable to bring you back.

Only the good die young...

2011-10-06T09:07:00.004+02:00

In a live concert years ago, where Paul McCartney performed rather dully, one reporter wrote the following day, "I think Chapman shot the wrong Beatle...". I felt the same way at the breaking of the news today. Death took the wrong Steve away... The other Steve who's alive and well is the one who made a mess out of Microsoft the last ten years of his reign. What a difference a man can make.

There will be millions of obituaries written about his Jobness today and in the next few days. Praising him as one of the greatest in the history of man. I've been praising him too in numerous blogsposts, when he was still alive, almost ever since I started this blog. I even believe I started blogging to this sole purpose, to praise Apple and the works of el Jobso! I was so envious of the "Fake Steve" blog then, you see. People almost felt I was family. Two of my best American friends send me late night mails at the breaking of news of his death, with their condolences. It felt kind of peculiar. Of course we were all prepared for the inevitable for years now. Even so, it hurt real bad. The last few days, strange to say, I was wondering about the day he'd pass away. How would that be. I was still in bed when my spouse came in and said in a dry tone: "Jobs's dead". For a moment I felt so weak and helpless that I could't even feel anything. Good thing that I wasn't standing up. "The legend passed away", I sighed. The immortal died. At 56. Having undergone a major cancer operation myself in 2007, I felt deeper what he must have been going through since 2003 when he was first diagnosed with cancer himself. Despite that, he was able to bring a faltering company to the top of the world. If ever a temple was built to the honor of entrepreneurship and creative inspiration, His Jobness must be in the center of that Pantheon. Words are too impotent to express his greatness. His loss will be felt deeply inside most of the 7 billion souls inhabiting the planet today. In a time where political world leaders are so scarce he was just a beacon that gave us hope for a better life. However, I'm sure our human resilience and our ability to eventually improve things, despite the crises we endure, despite disasters that hit us, we shall eventually see the seeds He planted blossom, for the best of everyone. His work will continue to change our lives for ever. May he rest in peace!

I fell in love with Apple in the early eighties. I remember I was queueing in a huge crowd to get the first glimpse of Lisa in a Flanders Technology show in 1985, when only a handful of tech freaks really understood what Apple's icons, windows and mice revolution in user interface with computers meant. A few years later, I bought for the needs of our company the first Machintosh boxes. I remember one full configuration that we used for slide presentations cost us the best part of 15K euros, representing a full year's salary for an average employee in those days. I couldn't afford buying Apple products for my own, but was glad to see our assistants using them and doing things we didn't consider were possible.

Years later, I became a real customer with the next coming of Jobs, and the launch of his colored iMacs. Ever since I became inseparable from all things Apple. I don't believe they ever brought out a product after 2000 that I haven't seen up close and personal or didn't buy myself. I built a whole collection of iPods and still proud of it. My entire family including my kids' friends are on Apple stuff. I even brainwash my closest friends into it. In other words, I am one of those Apple fans (or freaks to some). So be it.

As I am writing this, another good friend, from Geneva this time, just wrote to me:

"Aujourd’hui c’est un jour triste ! j’imagine que tu es comme moi assez sensible au départ de ce Grand Homme…A bientôt my friend"

Like I said, my best friends know how I felt about him and treat me like I was family.

I guess, today, I feel this way. It will be one of these days. I'll remember it clear in my mind, like I remember the death days of my own parents. But like all good Greeks, I can only close this post by saying:

Θα ζει για πάντα...

Thessaloniki

2011-09-27T16:46:00.001+02:00

Thessaloniki. A summer view from a monastery
north of the city, surrounded by Byzantine walls.

This exquisite description of the fabulous Byzantine city was sent to me by a friend, a short story novelist from my hometown in Greece. Her name is Mary Toloudi - Sidiropoulou. In the current financial and social tsunami the Greek ruling class has forced the entire country into, words like Mary's feel like a fresh breath of hope... they sound like soft music in your ears. This short description of pictures of the Greek co-capital was recently published in the September edition of the 'Soul' magazine. Mary's word is extremely compact and it's got much hidden in it. Read it, and then read it again. Each time you'll discover new sights and sounds. There's far more to it than meets the eye. This is so typical of her. Typical of short story tellers. They have this rare ability to ignore irrelevant details, and only focus on the essential. I wish our politicians learned to talk like this too, instead of showering us with pretentious statements that usually mean very little, if anything at all.

Θεσσαλονίκη Ιούλιος 2011

Είναι πόλεις παλιέςμε μυρωδιές και σημάδια. Αυτές που τα πρόσωπα των ανθρώπων κουβαλούν μνήμη καιιστορία. Πόλεις που η πίσσα της ασφάλτου ακυρώνεται από τον μισογκρεμισμένοπέτρινο τοίχο, την συκιά που ξεφυτρώνει πίσω από βυζαντινά τούβλα, σαν να είναιο ιδρώτας και ο μόχθος του εργάτη που τα στοίβαξε.

Η ζέστη εκτός απόσιωπές έχει και χρώμα. Όπως η σκόνη πατινάρει τα υφιστάμενα και τα κάνεικουρασμένα αλλά σεμνά, ενάντια στις προκλήσεις των καιρών. Έτσι και η ιουλιανήζέστη.

Πόλη σαν κι αυτές, η Θεσσαλονίκηεπιτρέπει το διαφορετικό, το διαχρονικό, το αέναο, το αμφίσημο να υπάρξουν. Είναιπου μπερδεύτηκαν οι κανόνες με το πέρασμα του χρόνου και ακυρώθηκε η εφαρμογήτους. Νέοι παλιοί θεσμοί, νόμοι, ήθη και έθιμα καθορίζουν με αναδρομική ισχύ τοπαρόν. Επιτρέπουν το κομψό και το χυδαίο, το πληθωρικό και το λιτό, το αρχέγονοκαι το νέο, το αργό και το ταχύ, το φωτισμένο και το σκοτεινό, το γνωστό και τοάγνωστο, το ορισμένο και αόριστο, το υπαρκτό και ανύπαρκτο, τη λάβα και το νερό,την μάχη και την εκεχειρία, τον έρωτακαι το μίσος να συνυπάρχουν και να κατρακυλούν τα λιθόστρωτα πασπαλισμένακανέλα παλιού μάστορα για να ξεπλυθούν και να αλλάξουν ρόλους στον Θερμαϊκό.

Εκεί δίπλακοιτάζοντας τον επιβλητικό πέτρινο όγκο του Λευκού Πύργου κινούνται νωχελικάανέμελοι και ξέγνοιαστοι περιπατητές, ξαφνιασμένοι περιηγητές, ανικανοποίητοι θλιμμένοιεραστές, συντροφιά με τα κλάξον των ανυπόμονων οχημάτων, υπό το βλέμμα τωνθαμώνων των παρά θιν΄ αλός καφενείων. Παρατηρούν τους πεινασμένους γλάρους ναανασύρουν τους νέους ρόλους έχοντας την ψευδαίσθηση ότι πρόκειται περί τροφής.Παρατηρήτρια κι εγώ με ψευδαισθήσεις γλάρου.

The age of arrogance...

2011-09-22T20:16:00.002+02:00

Would you trust the man pictured here to run your Ministry of Economic Affairs if your country was about to go chapter 11? Maybe yes... maybe not. I mean, ever seen Mugabe? Or Kadhafi? It's not the looks that show the quality of the content, folks. Hawking, poor sod, looks like dribbling shit, but he's got one of the best brainware God ever made, right? He could even father a few children... poor sod!

Yep, I know... I opened up this blogpost rather fiercely and with a lot of cynicism. There's a reason for that though. I went ballistic at the reading of this posting. You don't need to speak Greek to understand... I'll explain. The man in the picture is Evangellos Venizelos, the current minister of Finance in the Greek Cabinet; the one and only, who's been recently talking to the troika to secure payment of €8B that the Greek State desperately needs by mid October. Yep, that's the man!

Well, the news goes that since Venizelos has recently assumed a second role, that of Vice PM (or was it Vice President of the Republic? Either way, it's a useless function), he took advantage of the 'system' and created a cabinet for that position too, on top of his own Economic Affairs ministerial cabinet. The structure will cost the Greek State the best part of a cool million euros. Say what?!?!? Yes sir, if the news is right, the man needs a budget of close to a million to feed about 20 more civil servant souls (his personal friends, I guess, or other PASOK party Nepos nieces and nephews; see in Greece for top paying Public Service jobs like that it's not what you know, it's who you know!). These folks are supposed to work at his new VP role office. Doing what? I mean, such ceremonial (Biden style) roles can only be lame duck stuff, right? 'Show-up' tasks. Talk to Ambassadors, going to receptions and events that add no value, pretending life is good! Doing what the top guy finds really boring and waste of time, right? Is Venizelos going to fulfill this Vice something role in practice? You better doubt it. With the stuff he's got on his plate to salvage Greece from the financial clusterfuck they found themselves entangled for so long, I doubt he'll even find the time to learn how to spell 'vice whatever' (or what the Greek equivalent is). So, why spend a million on something he doesn't really need? In the meantime, he's busy barking (teaching) to the rest of the country about how 'we all have a duty to save Greece...bla...bla...bla...' How about you first, you shameless moron?

Like my ol' boss Geno T. used to say... (I paraphrase): '...open up a dictionary on the entry "arrogance" and you'll find E.Venizelos picture'. Sad, but so true...

With similar incidents by members of the ruling PASOK party hitting the press and the blogosphere every hour (or is it minute?), how do we ever expect anyone on this planet to trust anybody in Greece at all, ever? Like another friend of mine, the CEO of a Greek and very successful commercial company put it today : 'Only thing that could salvage Greece right now is a full blown dictatorship, until things get back in shape'. And I would add to that... 'Chinese style, where they actually execute by firing squad those ministers who abuse their positions'. Such a God sent regime would kick-off its mission by providing lethal injections to most members of the current cabinet of PM Papandreou. That would be a really good start, wouldn't it?

UPDATE: More news surfaced yesterday about our 'incorrigible' Evangelos Venizelos. This big shot of the ruling Papandreou cabinet, who's 'engineered' to become Greece's savior from the current mess, decided to use no less than a huge 'company' (taxpayer funded) leasing vehicle , 7 series BMW, at the price of a cool 750K euros. His fat belly needs protection from terrorist bullets, you see. Whereas his peer cabinet ministers speed around the streets of the capital inside less than 1600 cc vehicles, like it was recently decided, his Excellency EV treats himself to a lavish four wheeler that even Frau Merkel gets wet dreams thinking about. As in all 'good' democracies, we are all 'equal', you see, but some of us are more 'equal' than the rest. Like I said, the age of arrogance... Hang 'em bastards high, kids! If you know what's good for you.

Actually, I could get a full time assignment whistle-blowing the wrongdoings in this country. What am I saying'? I would probably need to do overtime too, to even scratch the surface...

...to be continued

The name of the game...

2011-09-15T22:59:00.000+02:00

Another panic attack in the markets due to the Greek debt crisis, triggered again by populist politicians and tabloid self serving media, another roller-coaster for the Euro and the Bourses worldwide. The downtrend has somehow subsided the last so many hours, as European 'leaders' Sarkozy and Merkel (where are puppets Van Rompuy and Baroso, by the way?) pledged support to the impoverished 'cradle of civilization' in the South East. How long is the windfall going to last this time? A few days? Weeks? Hours? Until another populist sneaky devil comes out with same old arguments we heard over and over. Been there done that - now what?

See, the problem is this. We've been flash-flooded for far too long by doomsday news about the troubled PIGS countries, and since recently about Italy too. The rest of us, the soit-disant Eurozone Europeans, yes, us 'prosperous' buggers in the Center and the North of the Continent, often hear that the wrongdoers should be expelled indeed from our 'prosperous' political, economic and monetary unions. We should rid them out of Eurozone, and maybe the EU too. 'They're good for nothing, anyways' we hear numerous populists claim. The media in Germany and the rest of Europe come out daily with insanities like these, and poor ignorant civilian masses (dump herds) consume their shameless barking with unseen appetite for sensation. In many of our Central European countries, nationals of the impoverished PIGS countries, who live as immigrants here, face frequent racist bullying in their daily lives more often that we'd like to admit. Comments are sometimes dressed in a pretentious blanket of political correctness, but more and more often they are quite explicit indeed. Calling myself a Greek nowadays in the company of Central Europeans will typically raise eyebrows as if I was a lazy and corrupt sonovabitch, living as a paria, at their cost. Despite the fact I paid my taxes in this country far above any other average Belgian family, and never took advantage of their unemployment benefits, because I happened to work every single day for 35 years and the weekends too. But, being Greek, 'I should burn in hell to pay for my sins', to paraphrase a Belgian populist MP as he put it 'politely' in a parliamentary debate about Belgium's position on the Greek sovereign debt just a few days ago.

However, regardless what populists and Media claim, there are some unquestionable facts:

Departure from the Eurozone. Theoretically plausible (impossible is nothing) but practically unrealistic. No explicit EU legislation was ever foreseen to deal with departing members. This was done in order to avoid the political, fiscal, economic and social fallout such an event would lead to. Considering such implications, the 'wise' founders of the European Monetary Union have therefore never provided any departure clauses for union members in their legislation. To make things even harder, to amend existing laws for making it possible fo members to quit the Union, would require national referenda in some countries, and all members would then be required to agree unanimously on the separation, even those 'condemned to expulsion'. Kinda ridiculous in terms of necessary burden on each and every member of the Union in order to reach expulsion legally...

But even if one theoretically assumed that departure from the Eurozone became legally plausible, the economic fall-out for the departing country in question and the rest of the Eurozone would be disastrous. It has been recently modeled by UBS investment strategists that if Germany departed from the Eurozone would cost them between 6 and 8 thousand euros per person resident in Germany during the first year alone. And between 3.5 and 4.5 thousand euros for quite a few years after that. A weak country departing would have to bear the cost of up to 11.5 thousand euro the first year per resident. One could certainly expect quite a bit of social unrest as result of this, even in member countries that seem fine otherwise, far and away from where the tsunami's came ashore. Should Greece be led to bankruptcy or return to, say, the drachma, a large number of European banks owning directly or indirectly Greek sovereign debt would tremble in their foundations and quite a few of them would collapse. Recapitalization in huge amounts would be necessary. Governments would intervene again with their taxpayer billions, and guarantee the risk of default in order to prevent banks from being ran by their panicing customers. If banks defaulted then many of their lenders would fall equally into bankruptcy in the process... House of cards, sort of thing. It doesn't take long that the whole banking system collapses to its knees. Bank-runs by panicking herds of civilians trying to salvage what they could, accompanied by opportunistic riots, like we saw them in London recently, are certain events of this doomsday scenario. By the way, I am not describing Greece in here. Most Greeks have seen so much of this Armageddon landscape in the last couple years, with lives lost and huge property damages that they eventually got used to it. In fact they'll be taking 'sweet revenge' on the rest of us Europeans who will suddenly find out what it meant to experience factual national bankruptcy like them Greeks. Believe me. I shit you not! This scenario is a cancerous aggressive tumor that is hugely metastatic. Unfortunately the Media shamelessly and irresponsibly continue to steer national masses, and choose to ignore these facts, or simply are too thick to understand them. Either way, they behave as criminally stupid and immensely shortsighted. Same is true for all those populist politicians who only care for their ego and re-election.

I don't know much about the situation in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, but I think I understand a bit better the Greek issues. I am one of them you see. Immigrant in Belgium but still a Greek. I don't pretend to know the solution, any solution whatsoever. I feel quite strongly about who I think causes the problems though. Here's my opinion.

National and EU International Political Leaders. In fact, this is a serious European problem for many years. We lack descent leadership in this Continent. All what politicians care about is their re-election for as long as it goes, and to make sure that their offsprings continue the trick as well. And they ring-fence their turf with barbed wire, for sure. Allowing no outsiders inside their terrains. Just like the few blue-blooded families who provided kings and royals to the continent the last few hundred years. And created a whole generation of degenerate hemophiliacs by marrying inside the family, in order to protect their assets. In Belgium far too many of the current 'leading' politicians had their parents in similar leadership positions as well, in the previous generation obviously. Michel, Tobback, De Croo, Vandenbossche, De Clerck, Anciaux... Any different from other countries? Hell no! How about the Bushes and the Kennedy's in the US? They call them 'dynasties', like in the times of the Roman and Chinese empires. In any case, we must bitterly admit: The EU is a union without leaders. Neither cojones nor guts anywhere in sight. Pretentious political correctness, bending the rules to their benefit, all shades of gray in corruption, spineless compromises, and making as if the strip naked king dresses in his most beautiful clothes.

The Media. These are the dearly paid whores of our society, the scum of the earth. Reporters of any sort. TV, Radio or printed/online content providers. Recent revelations about few tabloids in the UK and their criminal and deeply unethical ways are a small sample of what rules their intents and work. How far would they go and how much filth would they not write just to fill another page, and make a day's miserable wages. Especially Editors-in-Chief are the worst. Most carry innocent blood in their hands. And they are either too stupid or too evil to care! Shameless sobs!

Market speculators. It takes blood sweat and tears for the financial markets to climb at all. It takes the economy and GDPs to blossom and industrial activity to demo profitable growth for success. It takes a hell lotta work. Going up the mountain needs hard labor. Gravity pulls you down. You sweat and stop to breath. You curse and continue to crawl uphill like a turtle. One step at the time. Once in the top, lose your balance and there you go in the blink of an eye downhill to bounce like a dead cat deep down the abysmal ravine. Yes sir, going downhill is easy. Requires no effort. Gravity takes care of it. Believe it or not, it's the same in the financial markets for sure. Risk taking speculators make shedloads of cash on the way down. Short-selling pays well. Especially naked short-sells. Become a millionaire by selling things you don't own. And use your friends in the rumor mills, the media, to spread the panic. Like predators with herds in the savannas. Humans seem to lose their logic when panic spreads. Run for the lives. Their survival instinct makes them ignore everybody but themselves. Fear of death turns a parent against his/her own sibling. Better believe it. That's what speculators are looking for. And today, using quant strategies and computer trading in the millions of transactions in micro-secs, they manage to push the markets even deeper, even faster. Just to make another ten million that they couldn't possibly consume in their lifetime anyway. Just for kicks. Often leading to annual comps of several billion dollars for quite a few among them Wall Street hedge fund managers.

There's a well known US joke that goes like this. Q: What do you call a hundred lawyers chained at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start. Well, MNSHO is that if you replaced 'hundred lawyers' with 'ten thousand Politicians, Media reps and Market Speculators' you got the EU version of the joke. Who knows, maybe the joke turns into a real solution eventually. If we could only morph herds into predators... Dream on baby! Dream on!

Merits of uniqueness

2011-09-13T15:27:00.003+02:00

For a long time many industries supplied market solutions adapted to customers’s particular needs. The automobile industry is one of the most widespread examples. Personal computers is another. This product re-featuring to end-user specifications is known as mass customization. It is based on a number of discrete product functions and features required by buyers during the sales process. Manufacturing production lines and their respective automated planning and control systems have been designed to provide such solutions in many product offerings around the world. The times of Ford’s T-model for which you could “choose any color for your car as long as it was black”, are gone for good.

However, product personalization goes one significant step beyond mass customization. Here, subsequent production lines will need to support the manufacturing of products personalized to end user specifications in all their aspects. That is to say, products only made for and uniquely usable by their individual buyers. Such are exclusively ‘personal’ items. In the ophthalmics industry this type of personalization is still very rare. Until recently, similar products were only feasible in small production volumes, and were (are) mainly manufactured by craftsmen using tools and manual labor. There are a few known initiatives, where spectacle frames are ‘manually’ personalized to the bearer’s face morphology. However, no production lines are yet known, whereby fully personalized spectacles (frames, lens geometry and treatments) are created with minimal human intervention, and in larger, economically viable, and commercially attractive output production volumes. Notwithstanding, automated production of personalized spectacles in potentially more significant volumes appears quite feasible today, following the work done in the EC funded project Made4U, in which we developed the necessary technologies and systems in support of this objective.

But one should still raise the question: Why should personalization of spectacles be of any interest to end users, and what are the selling arguments about the added value these new niche and probably pricey products might offer? In the following we shall answer these questions based on our own project experiences to-date.

Download my remaining article here:

Class of '71

2011-09-08T10:14:00.002+02:00

I graduated high school in June 1971. 40 years later my class assembled back again in a reunion for two days. Same school same classroom but loads of snow on most people's hair. Some looked stunning, some great and some quite pleased with their lives. Even our teachers looked one of a kind, despite the many years resting on their shoulders. Unfortunately I missed the event (such an ass I am), but I had the pleasure to use photographs one of us shot during the two days, and I thus created a YouTube slideshow. I also posted all the photographs in my Flicker account. Those of you who have known these people enjoy their current looks and feels.

Impossible is nothing

2011-09-04T20:33:00.000+02:00

When you are that close to give up for good, and become unequivocally and utterly hopeless in the search of a plausible solution to the abysmal problems facing Greece these days, there comes something like this and turns your world upside down. You suddenly feel that you see a trace of light, just a few promising rays of hope, at the end of the tunnel. A great friend of mine with deep knowledge of the Greek situation from within, one I actually respect most among my compatriots for her judgement, character and work ethics, told me this story; I initially thought she was kidding, but then I found out for myself by surfing to the sites she pointed me to.

Google Earth view of Anavra

The man on the YT clip is Dimitris Tsoukalas, and he is a living proof that there is indeed one (at least) exception to the universally accepted axiom that in Modern Greece there is a severe lack of political leadership, and an abundance in corruption and incompetence. Tsoukalas is the 'koinotarxis', the elected community chief of a little mountain village, Anavra, in the Greek prefecture of Magnesia a few hundred km north of Athens. Located in a mountainous area at 1000 meters elevation above sea level, Anavra was a place falling apart only twenty years ago. Inhabited by a few hundred people, most of them animal farmers with their houses built next to their stables, animals and people chaotically intermingled all over the village. They had mostly sheep and goats, with only a small cattle. Stats talk of 20 thousand sheep and only a thousand cows back in 1980. Thirty years later that relationship reversed; sheep and goats halved, where cattle grew fivefold. There were hardly any paved streets in the village, common facilities or med care, and the elementary school was one class for all pupil ages. Young people were leaving in flocks to find their 'fortune' elsewhere. Winters were cold and snow would cut off the community from the rest of the civilized world for many days. This was the last place on earth you'd expect people to come to and build their life of prosperity. The village was on a course to extinction. A few more generations and the entire community would simply cease to exist, like so many hundreds of other communities of similar fortunes in mountainous and rural Greece. (Less than a year ago I visited such a place, Koila, in the Prefecture of Evros in the North-East of the country, where the only useful activity you could find today are a few young German delinquents, who are being 'reformed' before sent back home, to their communities, after serving time in that remote and abandoned North Greek forrest. Oh, yes, there were two retired couples there too, resting and counting their days to heavens, enjoying the merits of a simple and stressless life.)

In a TEDxAcademy hosted presentation shown in the clip above, Mr. Tsoukalas himself explains the story of his work. Needless to say, he was singlehandedly able to transform his community in less than 20 years in something that this achievement alone would make him a highly probable Nobel Peace Prize laureate, very much like Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi banker who, years ago, came up with that hugely successful micro-loan concept.

In a nutshell, Mr. Tsoukalas moved the animals out of the village in the neighboring mountains and built with the support of different development programs, funded nationally and/or by the EU, a series of modernly equipped stables, where animals grow by means of bio-farming methods and techniques (hormones free, etc). He eventually managed to create a community, where in terms of household income they've reached an astonishing average of 70K euros annually (close to 100K USD). With a financially prosperous community, a visibly happy population and continuous funding from different sources, who obviously saw the effectiveness of their funding, Mr. Tsoukalas actually further managed to transform the village to unimaginable extent, by adding all sorts of facilities and buildings, streets, common community areas for sports and cultural activities, large theater facilities with modern projection equipment, and even a two stories parking building. He invited doctors and teachers to work in the village, paid them almost twice they earned elsewhere, and offered them free accommodation. He solved all the community's energy problems by creating a windmill renewable energy park (with more parks under construction) that provide electrical power to every village citizen for free. For heating, he created a central processing oven that burns biomass (in abundance because of the cattle available) and that is enough to provide hot water to all households for heating purposes. It's a common sight these days seeing animal farmers carrying, instead of their traditional glitsa and comboloi, a laptop for surfing the net at high speed broadband connections. And there's much more. Needless to say, the village's population has doubled ever since. In itself, 'village growth in Greece' universally being accepted as an oxymoron. Unbelievable feat and achievement even by First World standards. And, yes, all this is done in... Greece! True story.

The things that shook me though in his story is his personal philosophy about tackling community problems and delivering results. Mind you, his approach is not just good enough for civil servants managing smaller or larger communities, rural or urban, but for every commercial company I have known, and every government in the four corners of the planet. The man is plain and simple an extraordinary role model to clone, inside and outside of Greece.

His thoughts: There is no secret to my success, he claims. Just hard work and integrity.

On the question of integrity he said that three things are really important:

a. Don't accept kickbacks; make the best decision for the community and not for your personal income.
b. Don't act only thinking about your personal progress in your next career steps. It's not about you, but it's about the community.
c. Do NOT affiliate yourself to any one single political fraction, left or right. Anywhere political parties put their tails in, effectiveness suffers.

In fact, Mr. Tsoukalas admits that the only way to rebuild successfully rural communities, and not just them, but the entire country as well, is through hard work, great character, integrity and absence of selfishness and of seeking personal gains. You got to work for the community and not for yourself. Eventually you will be successful too, because you'll stand on the shoulders of giants and "look further than the rest", like Isaac Newton admitted.

If you come to think of it, Tsoukalas applies in practice what Plato wrote about the ruling class in his Utopia imaginary state. Problem is, the Ancients knew all that, and described it for us, modern Greeks, to read and abide by in order to achieve and enjoy a prosperous life. And they did that 2.5 thousand years ago. However, the national culture, educational systems and political leadership that dominated the stage in Modern Greece for many years has led to a situation where people like Tsoukalas are practically impossible to find. Therefore, the country has currently found itself under severe financial, social and political strain, and it will unfortunately take much more time of further aggravation before it gets better. If there's any hope at all, it should be found among the desperate and apolitical youth. Political parties have shown very little competence in sorting out the country's problems, and have been severely discredited by scandals of corruption and lack of character among their 'leaders'. In the meantime, the party and its PM managing the country today should better engage Tsoukalas himself in its cabinet. In a leading position. He could then start doing something useful for everyone, instead of just trying hopelessly to please Toika's irresponsible and unreasonable requirements that could achieve nothing really other than push the entire country even faster down the drain.

Optomorphism

2011-09-01T11:03:00.002+02:00

If you Googled ‘Face shape spectacles’ or similar search terms, you’d get plenty of URL references pointing to a variety of optician homepages that provide free advice for best aesthetic effects upon their customers wearing designs of their frames. To classify human face morphology most (beauty) experts gravitate towards seven dominant face shapes: oval, square, round, oblong (aka rectangle), diamond, heart (aka inverted triangle), and triangle. Tipheret proposed objective criteria to efficiently perform this classification. However, the face shapes of many real persons often fall between discreet classes, and it is quite a challenge for a computerized system to accurately predict without human intervention which shape class a given face belongs to. Nevertheless, IBV has researched the possibility to automatically identify face shapes from end-user portrait images, based on the automatic positioning of critical reference points, by measuring relevant distances among those points, and finally applying purpose-made prediction algorithms (Discriminant Analysis and Fuzzy inference - associative matrices- techniques were used to this end). Results of this work and conclusions thus far are also presented in this article. The effort was guided by the goal to create a sales environment for the selection and purchase of pairs of spectacles, personalized to end-users’s head and face characteristics for optimum comfort and aesthetic result (persona).

This is an extract of an article I wrote about automatic frame selection. Link to the original post and download the remaining article, in support of our project.

BBC's Global player

2011-08-28T20:48:00.005+02:00

The Global BBC iPlayer is an iPad app that was launched less than a month ago in 11 countries in the EU. These are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. The Global iPlayer is different than the equivalent local version that was released in the UK for some time now. Mind you, you actually have to use a UK based IP to stream content into the local app. And the content you get is quite different than Global's. I can actually watch that local content (free) on a personal computer via any popular browser, but I need to trick the buggers via VPN. I do the same for Hulu, by the way. I pay for the VPN but others I know do that for 'free' from somewhere in the 'open source' world of goodies.

The Global gives access to British TV shows and movie productions that have been quite popular abroad as well. And were made in the last 50-60 years! Fascinating, innit? About 1500 programming hours were apparently available on day one and BBC plans to add another 100 hours per month on average.

I have no idea whether a subscriber in one of the countries mentioned would still be able to access the service from a different country. In other words, would BBC continue checking incoming IPs even if a caller's userid validates properly? I'd imagine the only restriction they'd typically apply would be at that iTunes purchase point. The userid validation. I mean, that would be the reasonable thing to do, right?. Think of someone who bought the app in say, Austria, paid a month's subscription (6.99€), and then drives south over the border to Slovenia for a couple weeks' vacation. Shouldn't such a user be able to watch the shows from there, then? Of course he should! But wishful thinking is one thing, DRM is another. Logic is rather scarce in DRM related matters. Only greed and shortsightedness. I plan to test this very soon and will update the post, unless someone else finds out first and posts a comment.

I only found out yesterday about the official launch of the Global player in this country. Since I've often been addicted to many of the series that came out of BBC, and in all sorts of genres mind you, I went out promptly to buy a month's subscription of the service. It works exactly like any other iTunes in-app purchase transaction. You click some OK's and Agree's and Bob's your uncle. Good to go.

IMNSHO, BBC is indeed the best broadcasting team in the history of mankind... I'm saying this despite my occasional lack of respect for the British. Their iPlayer content is organized in a number of ways and if you still can't find your preferred series or episode, they entertain you with a pretty efficient 'search' function.

The quality of streaming is stunning, that's the least you could say. I have to admit though, my downstream speed gets pretty close to 100 Mbps (fiber), so this might be a reason for the exceptional streaming quality. I have the slight impression though that the Brits must have worked out their own compressing algorithms. It's too good to be true by conventional streaming standards. You pick up your episode and within literally 1 to 2 secs, maybe less, it fires the display and never looks back. Fluent and full screen on 25 fps just like on TV. No artifacts, streaming blockages, lost frames, pixelization, or the usual BS that we are used to see in Vimeo, YouTube and many others. I'm sure they've done some low level native coding in a number of areas to get better results than the standard iOs libraries. Of course, being the BBC, they might have probably managed to clear their own coding with Apple much easier than a plain vanilla 3 man and a dog software developer company from around the corner, if you know what I mean. They themselves admitted such in the Guardian article referenced below. That particular point concerned non-interruption of the download function (offline viewing) while the iPad fell into 'hibernate' mode. Their player user interface also looks slightly different that what you are used in Quicktime and other popular player interfaces. The remaining interface is not something to write home about. Functional, simple, does the job. Déjà vu. Only issue though, the app doesn't seem to natively support Airplay, so the only way to stream your content into a big ass flat TV monitor is via a VGA port (not cool - works fine, but with no TV sound unless you link them with a separate audio cable), or by connecting to one of your TV's HDMI ports (cool, but I haven't tested that yet; HDMI carries the sound too, that's why I said 'cool').

They also offer the possibility to download shows for offline watching. I didn't try that because I don't believe in large storage iPads (mine has got the minimum storage available). I'm sure though, it'll work fine.

In the meantime, I watched shows I haven't seen in 20 years and more, like Only Fools and Horses (work), Yes Minister, and Yes Prime Minister, Absolutely Fabulous, and the recent movie about the story of the 1985 Band Aid World concert 'When Harvey met Bob'. Kinda nostalgic. Reminded me of the 70s and 80s and about having been young at one time. With a good sense of humor. Where has all the time gone?

Only thing that bothered me so far; for us, non-UK-English native speakers, I haven't been able to spot English subtitles anywhere in the app yet. In their UK programming the BBC are quite keen in Teletext subtitles (888) for those with hearing disabilities, and it seems strange that they launched the player internationally without any support. BTW, no, it's not yet available in the US. No big deal. Hulu and Netflix are also released to US audiences only. DRM payback time!

Berlin 2011

2011-08-15T12:15:00.029+02:00

A Trabi - photograph by Thomas Hoepker

I visited Berlin last week. I stayed there for seven days. This was my second time in town. First time was back then, a couple years after the fall of the Wall, and the start of reunification. It was 1992, I reckon. I don't remember much from that first trip, other than the Brandenburger Tor and Checkpoint Charlie, as well the immense construction works at the Potsdamer Platz. And some leftover standing plates of the Wall here and there.

This time I experienced a lot more. I visited most of the usual suspect venues, and actually explored for the first time an entire district, the Mitte. This should be, in many ways, the most important part of the city, boasting the largest number of known buildings and monuments. I stayed at Friedrichstrasse, one block south its intersection with Unter den Linden. For anyone who's been in that area, this is pretty damn central. Walking distance to most known places any tourist in Berlin usually talks about. The other important detail: the hotel I stayed, and most of the venues I been to, are in the former East Berlin, with a few right over where the Wall was, in West Berlin. I therefore witnessed very explicitly the ability of present day Germans to turn financial means and funding into positive assets and investments that help progress the nation and improve every citizen's life. In fact, this is the second time Germans rebuild their nation in recent memory. First time was right after WW-II with the help of the Marshal Plan; second time followed the tearing down of the Wall and the reunification of Germany 20 years ago. Looking at the result of the German resilience and ability to re-emerge stronger as a nation from similar situations in the past, I can't but feel ironic about Margaret Thatcher, who said to Gorbachev that she loved Germany so much she'd still prefer to maintain two of them. Who can't be 'afraid' of the Germans, indeed? If you observe thoroughly the result of the reconstruction of Berlin, from the end of WW-II to this day, you'll understand Maggie's statement better than anything. But this was not only the result of German persistence, skill, work ethics and hard labor. It was also the result of the post reunification democratic regime that made this possible. It was the glory of free entrepreneurship and democracy. With central government being a facilitator and an enabler, not an oppressor in the name of a failed ideology (like Nazi's and Communists, for that matter).

However...

I have never before felt so ambivalent in my life as in that trip. There's a disturbing perception of 'shadows' and 'traces' of fear and some persistent sadness hanging above everything you experience, wherever you go. At least I felt this way. Despite their impressive presence, and the awe which most renovated and rebuilt historical buildings make you feel, as well as the newly risen and often modern and fabulous architectural marvels in every corner of the city, still, you feel quite depressed thinking about what many of these buildings and their inhabitants have been like, seen and suffered in the last 100 years. First under the Nazi monstrosities, followed by the oppressive communist regime of the DDR, eventually leading to the Reunification in 1989. Names of streets, photographs of buildings then and now, museums with objects and artifacts about both 'socialist' oppressions (Nationalistic and Communist), all have their little tragic story to tell you. You walk down a street, you observe a building that happens to be quite like the way it used to as its renovation still needs to catch-up (the worst were done first), or you just read a street name, or you find yourself on a large square like Bebelplatz, and you suddenly cease to see today's scenes deploying in front of your eyes with all their voices, colors, tastes and smells, and it all becomes sepia, monochrome, and colors are no more to see, and you are surrounded by shadows of obscure dark or uniformed regime agents, and you see them yelling at, chasing and pushing helpless citizens for doing nothing particularly suspicious other than simply being at the wrong place the wrong time. And then you feel like dark heaven fell upon you! You somehow forget all the goodies money and hard labor created, and the welfare they offered you to enjoy. "It's right here where 'it' happened indeed", you sigh. It's no lie. It's right here! Oranienburg Strasse and Bebelplatz. Kristallnacht. Attack of the New Synagogue. Burning of all books considered anti-regime. Prosecuting of gypsies and Jews as belonging to an inferior race. And there are thousands more places to remind you of similar events of the past, all over the city. From both oppressive regimes. The Nazi's and Honnecker's DDR. Not to forget the 18 year old East Berlin kid who got shot and was left to bleed to death in no-man's land when he tried to cross over the Wall to the West.

Although I felt quite uneasy visiting the new Synagogue, the DDR Museum, and the Mauer Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, I got mostly depressed from my visit at the recently created building at the back of the German Historic Museum, a three level wing that was architected by Pei, famous for his entrance pyramid work at the Louvre in Paris. In fact, currently running expositions presented in the three levels of that building were about the work oppressive totalitarian regimes do (and continue to do wherever they still exist) to suppress fundamental freedoms of their citizens in order to protect the ruling class of a small high ranking elite. I believe it was Churchill who once said democracy was not the best possible form of government, but unfortunately he didn't know any better. The three expo's at Pei's wing of the Historic museum seemed to me the best justification of Churchill's argument.

The first floor displayed an expo of photographs the Historic museum assembled in the last 20 years about contemporary history and life, and the second floor was used for an expo under the title Order and Annihilation (Ordnung und Vernichtung), about the role of the Police in Nazi Germany. I felt extremely uneasy with the exhibits of the latter expo, especially the setup to photograph and profile victims (see picture on the right), and a device used to measure facial and skull characteristics of victims to decide upon their racial origins (photograph hereunder, on the left). You normally read about these things and you may have seen pictures, but here you see them in real, you can touch them and you can't help thinking with horror about the victims upon whom these instruments of terror have been used. You see real pictures of real victims (not actors in some Spielberg film), a filing cabinet of a system with full reports about their origins and activities, you touch their files, and read the details with the inevitable conclusion in large print at the back. Deceased in 1943. Deceased in 1944. Deceased in 1939. Followed usually by a name of some infamous concentration camp. Auschwitz. Buchenwald. Und so weiter! Most of them were simple hard working individuals, trying to make a living for their family and children, and, who knows, perhaps catch a glimpse of happiness in their lives. You imagine with horror yourself sitting in the chair of those victims, and you suddenly 'see' the coldblooded faces of your oppressors leaning above you, measuring your skull and the length of your nose, the distance between your eyes, the size of your ears, and then you see them decide that you are part of what they consider an under-race, a subject for annihilation, to simply 'preserve' the purity of their 'own', the blue eyed blond(e)s of the Third Reich. So they said. In your mind, you become another victim and you never before feel deeper the meaning of JFK's words 'Ich bin (ein) Berliner'.

At the ground floor there was a photography expo by two famous German photojournalists, Thomas Hoepker and Daniel Biskup, under the title Über Leben. I must admit, had I only seen Hoepker's photographs and nothing else at all during this trip, that would still be worthwhile being here. He is an autodidact photojournalist who for many years operated under the Magnum Agency. In the fifties and sixties he has created some monumental pictures of the life of individuals under the DDR regime and their struggle to survive in everyday life. These pictures, brought together in a book he recently published under the title DDR-Ansichten (you could order this in Amazon.de), are so full of realism and truth, and human pain and resilience, that they actually make you feel like I felt seeing the instruments of horror in the second floor expo. The one about Order and Annihilation.

A few days earlier, I had visited the DDR museum at the Spree, opposite the Berlin Cathedral. I can't say I was impressed much. It was fine, but not exceptional. It failed to create an emotion in me. It all looked like a cinematic setup. I felt a whole lot closer to what East Berliners experienced and thought under the DDR by looking at Thomas Hoepker's photographs at the Historic Museum. A whole lot closer, trust me. Honest! Many of those pictures were life-size prints, and as you closed-up on the faces captured, you soon became one of them. This is great photography. It's not the artistic or composition, or even the technical elements that make up the greatness of a picture. It's the message it conveys. The emotion. The question marks it plants in your thoughts. It's the catching of the moment that paints a thousand pictures and feelings inside you. It's the irony, the humor, the bitterness, the anxiety, the feeling of unfairness and injustice. You look at Hoepker's photographs and feel like shouting out loud: Why? Why did all this have to happen? Think of the tragic cynicism of a "people's" regime that did that to individual citizens in the name of the collective welfare of the 'people'. The People's Revolutionary Army. People's Democratic Police. A People's Central Party Committee and Central Government! Established at the top as an electionless regime for life. Like the Vatican. God's ambassadors for ever and ever! But who are these so called 'people'? Where are they? How do they look? What color and size? What do they eat to survive? Do they work? What clothes do they wear? Do they smile? Have they ever laughed? Are they happy? Or sad? Do they reproduce? Or do they just wait stoically to perish? Is there any difference between the 'party' people and Hoepker's people? Be damn sure there is. Like day and night!

photograph by Thomas Hoepker

I have been obsessed for days by one of Hoepker's photographs (shown here, left) with an old man staring from a distance a net with oranges for sale on a table, in Leipzig. This man's face... can write volumes long of the truth of living a life under a failed, stubborn, oppressive DDR regime that constantly pretended that all was fine, and kept its subjects for long dark years under its iron fist of state policemen and party apparatchiks. Hoepker, a simple person indeed, humble as no-one I know (as he appeared to me in a televised interview they were showing in the expo) simply claims "I'm not an artist, I am an image maker". He's more than humble. I saw many more so-called artists, self-proclaimed in many cases, like one I know well in this country (how pretentious, OMG) who can't achieve even one percent of the impact on human emotion a man, an artist indeed, like Hoepker has provoked in me. His framing is ingenious. Compared to him, Bresson is simply average. Like I said, it's worth going to Berlin to just see this expo. True story!

People of Berlin... My new Photobook

2011-08-14T10:53:00.004+02:00

People of Berlin by VJK-D | Make Your Own Book

A great lesson for Greek Media (MME) reps...

2011-07-08T15:30:00.007+02:00

I was watching this morning's latest video's on CNBC. As the jobs report came out ugly, I wondered how badly that would affect the market at the open. I surfed to the CNBC homepage, and fell onto this footage embedded above, showing the Mississippi Governor respond to reporters' queries, led by my CNBC longtime fave, Joe Kernen.

Jeez, my Greek compatriots, who call themselves reporters, should have a look at this. A pompous Governor Haley Barbour (R-MI) goes into his usual GOP ritual of blaming the President for all things loss of wealth to entrepreneurs and mid-classers, destroying the economy with trillion dollar wide deficits, a failed stimulus program, and shedloads more demagogy like this. BTW, the June jobs report came out ugly, as I mentioned, but the key contributors were the Local and State Government, who continue to cut jobs due to budget tightening reasons. At a given point, when the Governor's BS hit the fan, participating reporters started asking some very interesting questions. They were very civil indeed in their manners, but gradually shredded the fatso governor into pieces and threw them to the dogs! One of the reporter panel members suddenly declares: "I would have said that in the face of a Democratic Politician as well," he said, "Never believe a Politician talking about the Economy, because everything he says is self serving". Wow! That took a pair of blown-up cahones to say that in the face of an interviewed Ranking Government Official, but this is US, the land of the Free. Being a visible Politician doesn't immunize you from being a dick, and having to hear reporters tell you that in your face. Strip naked emperors in the US are told so. Not like those pretentious prats representing the Media in our European continent in general, and in my home-country in particular. If Panos Kammenos was in the US, that would be the last we heard of him, after that panel finished him in the interview, like they did to Governor Barbour. Kammenos would end up burnt out, vanished... gone!

Heard that Mr. Hatzinikolaou???

The insanity of demagogy

2011-06-27T21:29:00.004+02:00

Recently the Greek media have witnessed a bizarre and unusual case of 'tabloid breaking news', whereby an elected member of the Parliament (from ND, the right conservative party Nea Demokratia), Panos Kammenos, accused the current PASOK Prime Minister George Papandreou for involvement in a highly abusive 'inside information' case of financial fraud in which the PM 'allegedly' must have indirectly used CDS trades to enrich himself and his family. I initially heard this from a friend whose spouse went ballistic at the break of the story. Then, I read related Internet press articles and blogs to find out more. Kammenos's intent was to obviously lead the chaotic Greek Public opinion to the belief that PM George Papandreou 'sold' the country to 'money-makers' for the sole purpose of his own personal wealth. That was the biggest pile of bullsh#t I heard in recent years. Kammenos's story was manufactured so badly that even a ten year old with elementary knowledge of arithmetics, if properly explained simple CDS rationale and mechanics, would have told you the story was totally crap! Worthless to even be called 'news' whatsoever! I heard Kammenos repeat his incredibly idiotic arguments on the radio too, interviewed by Hatzinikolaou, a right wing reporter, who nevertheless seemed quite irritated by what he was hearing. Nevertheless, the entire nation, currently depressed by troika's (EU Commission, ECB, IMF) austerity measures, initially believed (and many still do) this incredible sample of populism and mean demagogy. In every country I know there are always elected parliamentary representatives, who make a habit to go after 'conspiracy theories' of all sorts, and emerge as master populists, mostly in their own personal interest in acquiring extra future voters. Bizarrely, they all seem to envy the infamous glory of Wikileaks founder Assange, I reckon.

OK, that's the story. The way I understand it, and in a language that I'd use to explain to eight year olds, here are the facts that have been reported in the press and blogs.

In the summer of 2009 under the Conservative government of PM Karamanlis, the Post Office Bank in Greece (TT) purchased a number of CDS contracts to cover a financial risk of approximately one billion dollars. What does this mean? I believe the TT must have owned a whole lot of Greek Treasury bonds. Fearing potential loss of cash in case of a credit event (i.e. sovereign bankruptcy, debt restructuring, and more like that) the TT general management at the time decided to cover their exposure for one billion dollars. Why just one Billion? Why not two or more? Well, the way to cover this type of risk is via the so-called Credit Default Swaps, or CDSs. CDS work kinda like an insurance policy. They cover a financial risk amount (in the case of TT a Billion dollars), they expire like bonds at a predefined maturity date, and cost a premium that is known as the 'spread'. The spread is paid quarterly to the seller (or, say, insurer) and it is measured in basis points (one basis point is 1/100 of one percent of the 'nominal' risk amount that the CDS covers). In the case of TT, I estimate the spread must have been in the region of 100 to 130 basis points (1 to 1.3 percent - I base my assumption on historic graphs that I found about CDS spreads for Greece and a bunch of other Euro-countries in the last 3 years). This means that, in order to cover their one Billion dollar risk exposure, TT would have to pay an annual fee of about 10 to 13 million dollars to Goldman Sachs (if I remember well, GS has been mentioned as the issuer/seller of those CDSs). Were the nominal (exposure) amount 2 or 3 billion dollars, they (TT) would then have to pay 2 to 3 times the mentioned spread (in the region of 30M dollars annually). The more risk you cover the more it'll cost you. But you need to own the cash to fulfill the spread paying requirement. You don't need to be a brain surgeon to grasp this, right?

One thing you need to remember: CDS are contracts that don't individually cost you anything per se at the time of issuance; you just agree their terms and conditions and sign the bloody thing. Like insurances though, you are next required to pay annual premiums (the spreads), moneys that could eventually disappear entirely into the insurer's pockets as plain and pure profit (like it almost always statistically happens in the Insurance Industry). The TT managers bought the CDSs in August 2009 simply to be able to sleep on 'both their ears', as we often say in Belgium. That is, they did that trade to feel 'safe' even if a catastrophic event happened before the CDS's maturity. (As already mentioned, this event happened in the summer of 2009. During the last days of the Conservative government. For a country in disarray the absolute fee amount payable to GS by TT was pretty substantial. I wonder whether TT makes a habit of covering their exposures via CDSs. Or, were any 'usual' kickbacks involved, like the common practice goes in Greece? Who knows. Nothing surprises me anymore...)

In conclusion, during the summer of 2009, the TT leadership believed their Nation's Government was at risk of defaulting on their public debt. And they thus decided to cover their 'derrière', pardon my French. That decision was to cost TT about the best part of 10 to 12 M dollars a year (like I said earlier, I didn't find mention of that particular transaction spread anywhere, I just base my assumption on graphs that I found of the Greek CDS spreads at the time - mind you, same Greek spreads now, mid-2011, are about 20 times as high!). TT engaged in financial risk coverage for one billion dollars that cost them between 10 and 12 million dollars per annum, I'll say this time and again. In case of no credit events until expiry, all these moneys would have gone away from TT's (and Greek taxpayers') pockets into the pockets of big-ass bankers of Goldman Sachs, bless their soul.

Later that fall, early winter 2009, and following fresh Parliamentary elections, the Socialist PASOK returned to power, with George Papandreou as the country's new PM. A little later, in December 2009, TT decided to ditch the August CDS contracts. I guess, the new government was trying to save money on anything that moved, and the new TT leadership kinda thought, "why the heck do we need to hedge that Billion dollar risk? We need to save money and cut cost wherever possible. Why then continue to pay 12M a year to someone like GS? Let some others, who fear Greece's default even more, go buy CDSs from Goldman. Let them pay GS the spreads instead." Here's where this gets interesting: Per Kammenos, the new parties, who emerged as buyers of those same CDSs and that for a spread of 130-140 basis points, presumably were what is known as 'naked CDS' traders. Meaning, they owned no underlying securities (risky bonds) to hedge against. They just did the trade hoping to earn easy future money by playing on spread variances when the latter would have climbed recklessly. Kammenos mentioned a couple of company names (I don't believe he could prove that with hard evidence yet, and I guess it's pretty hard to do this anyway), and via some shrewd populist wizardry he managed to implicate PM Papandreou, and accuse him of indirect involvement in the CDS sale to those companies. In fact, Kammenos said that relatives of Papandreou (his brother Andrikos) had an indirect connection with one of the companies that purchased the CDSs via a member of the Board (ex President of Costa Rica) sitting on both companies, the buyer and Andrikos's (Jeez, like this you can prove Obama's dad assassinated Marilyn Monroe to spare JFK a scandal). Then Kammenos jumps into the stratosphere and mentions a couple of figures that could award him the Guinness Book of Records prize for Populism 2011! He mentions that in this transaction TT lost a total of 40M dollars potential profit (and he insinuates at the same time that PM Papandreou's friends at TT gave that profit away to his relatives and friends in the purchasing companies). Kammenos then ejects himself into the outer space and claims that these same CDS are now worth 60 to 65 Billion dollars (give and take a few billion, no shit)! OMG! And that PM Papandreou is the next one to emerge in the top 100 Forbes list of richest people on planet Earth. Welcome to the club of the rich and famous, Georgie boy! You actually made it this time, dirty devil. Poor sod Panos Kammenos just squared the circle, folks! Right on...

I guess Kammenos doesn't even know what a billion dollars looks like. For sure he's got no clue how many zeroes that is. I guess as many as he got in his math test when he was at junior high. But, I don't wanna sound speculative and populist myself. I will simply prove, based only on definitions, average level of human logic, and simple addition and subtraction that Kammenos qualifies to be a member of Anti-Mensa, involving people with single digit IQs. Yes indeed.

Let's see what CDS speculators normally do (whatever I say here is explained in spades in the CDS Wikipedia article and other relevant sources... I din't make this up, folks...trust me!) A speculator who trades on the back of risky sovereign debt, and expects CDS spreads to climb, enters a buy transaction early enough when possible. In Greece's case, someone with a clear vision about what could happen in 2010 and 2011, and a hell lot of money in his/her pocket (only big dogs can play this type of market), could have entered a CDS 'buy' transaction sometime in 2009. From this perspective, the TT leadership (albeit no speculators, I presume, but one never knows in Greece) proved quite visionary in their investment activity during August 2009. Sort of.

What happens next? Well, after they bought CDSs, speculators will have to start paying the quarterly spreads due to their suppliers. For a Billion dollars those quarterly payments are in the millions. That's why CDS speculators have to be 'big dogs'. They are cash rich and can spare to pay 10M a year for a 'normal' spread of 100 basis points on a nominal of one Billion, waiting for the sun to shine on them. These are people (companies, hedge fund managers) who can afford to hold their 'cash' breath for a very long time. And hope for the best (eh.. worst in fact, as far the sovereign debt is concerned). If spreads start climbing, then two things may happen: CDS traders, while holding to their old 'CDS buy' contracts, will a) either sell new CDS contracts for the same nominal amount at the current much higher spreads, or b) simply do nothing and wait for spreads to climb even higher.

Note: Those institutional investors with underlying dubious securities in their portfolios, who risk losing considerable value in case of sovereign default, will normally stick to their CDS and won't sell them back-to-back to 'play' the spreads... they'll just use CDSs like anybody who insures his house or car against potential damage. Kinda like TT should have done if they felt high risk in their holdings of Greek sovereign debt. In other words, normal investors don't speculate on spreads. Only 'naked CDS' traders should/would normally be interested in taking advantage of climbing spreads. These folks are speculators. They take high risks expecting high returns. Like gambling! The rest of us, like TT for instance, will continue paying spread fees and sleep on both ears regardless of spread climbs. It's in fact quite stupid to even think, let alone claim that TT lost a cashing-in opportunity by selling their CDS early and because they didn't speculate on the spreads. As an organization with State participation, even if they had kept their CDSs, they should have never sold them back-to-back to take advantage of higher spreads. Unless Kammenos claims that his party's conservative leadership advised TT management in August 2009 to speculate (OMG!) on Greece's risk to default its sovereign debt! That would make them ND cabinet far more guilty that they ever thought possible. With Kammenos carrying their flag, marching proudly to the abyss.

What is this spread trading by speculators good for, then? Well, if you own CDS that you bought at low spreads and decide to sell them back-to-back when spreads get higher, you can earn the difference as pure profit. If the spread delta is, say, 500 basis points, this would yield 50 million dollars in a year's time on a nominal of one billion dollars. Capice? Now, how likely are spread deltas that high? In the case of Greece very likely. Right now the delta between what TT agreed to pay in August 2009 and what is traded in our days gets to the best part of 2000 basis points, or 200 M dollars a year. Pretty much insane, innit? However, the total amount of spreads you get from your buyer (client) until CDS contracts expire, minus the total spread amount you paid to your seller (supplier) over the same period may turn to be either positive (profit) or negative (loss). Now, if you rush and sell back-to-back your purchased CDS soon after you bought them, the delta between spreads is probably small; however, you can pocket this delta over a longer period of time until expiry. If you wait and only sell them when the spreads got real high, then you'll be pocketing a larger delta but for a shorter period of time. This is the point I have been trying to make all along. Not only the suggestion that TT had to speculate with CDSs to benefit from spread variance profits, but also the 40 M opportunity Kammenos mentions is absurd beyond belief. Where did he come up with this figure? What assumptions did he make? Suppose TT didn't sell its CDSs in December 2009. When were they then supposed to sell them to enjoy a delta (how many basis points would that be?) that over time would have earned TT the famous 40M? And where does this 40M come from? Is it the lost TT profit opportunity to this day or does it include amounts that TT could have potentially gained until the CDS maturity. And what if a credit event happened tomorrow? How much would then be TT's loss, since their speculative trading would have deprived them from the right to benefit the payout of their original Billion dollar exposure? All these play quite a role in defining potential profits or losses. What is Kammenos really talking about here? Looking at the graphs, I betsa, if TT was run by speculators, and behaved like I explained above (which I guess they are not supposed to be doing with taxpayers' money anyway) they could have made to-date anything between a loss of 20M to 60M profit or more. 40 million profit represents just a spread delta of 400 basis points paid over a year. Kammenos's wishful thinking. But we are almost two years later now! In the meantime CDS spreads in Greece have grown to 2000 basis points. Kammenos is really a dick in simple arithmetics and launched a 40M dollar speculative amount all over the map. There's no way to define that amount at all! Scientifically impossible to calculate. Because any assumption made by Kammenos is as good as any other made by you or me for that matter. And each assumption leads to a final P&L bottom-line that could equally probabilistically be either negative or positive. If we knew how to make a P&L positive in speculative trading we would all be rich by now. Do you get it, Panos dude? I seriously doubt it!

Next, I don't wanna waste much more of my energy and your time in responding to the 65B dollar BS innuendo like Georgie P., the PM, and his friends have potentially earned and are worth today per Kammenos allegations! In this particular case a CDS contract covering one billion dollars risk may have been priced at any spread between 100 basis points and 2000. If a credit event happened before the CDS's expiry, this is all you get, provided you own and have always meticulously paid all of your spreads: Just one Billion. Now, like I said, to ever get this Billion the underlying security (the T-Bill) must somehow default (sovereign bankruptcy, inability to pay at all or debt restructuring) before expiry of the CDS contract. CDS spreads continuously change to reflect increased default risk. A bond owner, worried about losing an investment of a Billion dollars in Greek sovereign debt is nowadays paying 200M dollars a year as insurance premium (CDS spread). If disaster then strikes before the bonds' expiry he'll eventually receive the principal minus 20%, which is still a hell lot better than kissing the entire billion good bye. Pretty insane spreads to pay, but still the decision to keep paying them if the risk is real makes a lot of sense.

The 60 to 65 Billion multiple 'worth' Kammenos came up with of the one Billion dollar initial nominal amount... what can I say? Where did Kammenos pick this up from? Did he think that money is created out of hot air that he currently breaths as we speak in the heat wave my compatriots are currently experiencing from the high North to the deep South? Maybe. Well, as a final remark to that moron: Even my grandma knows (RIP) that the Billion dollar nominal amount of this transaction could never ever become anything more than 1B, let alone 65B. The contracts mention 1B in case of default. That's it. Pretty good dough, but still far, far and away from Wall-e Utopia land inhabited by Kammenos and those who use him to spread conspiracy BS (BTW, 'Kammenos' means 'burnt' in Greek, no shit)!

iPhoneography

2011-06-07T13:23:00.067+02:00

Years from now my compatriots will still claim that the term truly originates from the Greek. Definitely the '-ography' part does. I guess, the Phone part as well. From the Greek noun φωνη, meaning 'human voice'. Only the "i" is less of a Greek, but I guess the Big Fat Wedding dad would have come up with a plausible explanation about this too. In fact, iPhoneography, like nostalgia, are not originally Greek, but they are compound names built upon parts of Greek provenance.

In any case, iPhoneography was invented in the US. It's the contemporary 'artistic' endeavor of shooting pictures with a cell-phone (preferably an iPhone) and posting them to some kind of online social club (FB, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram,...). You witness a scene of interest, you pull-out your cell-phone and shoot to capture the moment, enthused and directed by your inner feelings, popping out from your 'creative' unconscious. And if your photographic work seems pretty cool, you might be even elevated to the ranks of the talented pioneers of the craft.

Such a gifted iPhoneographer is Sion Fullana, and I happen to 'follow' him on Instagram. He originates from Spain, but he currently resides with his friend in New York. The remaining of his profile you can read here.

Apparently Fullana is considered as one of the 'fathers' of iPhoneography. Judging by the level of his Instagram activity, it seems that he does quite a bit of walking in the streets of Manhattan, and shooting of unsuspecting passers-by with his iPhone 4.0. Most of his pictures are rather good, I have to give him that, albeit slightly déjà-vu. I mean, Cartier Bresson tried that sort of thing ages ago, right? Given his former artistic background, Fullana does a lot of the right stuff in terms of composition, although the square format he is forced into by Instagram renders his feat quite challenging.

Fullana posts monochrome shots most of the time to add more drama. Dark shadows with scarce detail or blown highlights seem to rule his world. I believe someone once noticed, if color does not add any worthwhile information to a composition, then go B/W! On the other hand, shooting pictures in mega-cities like Paris, London, New York, makes it 'easier' to stand out as a popular photographer, regardless of the equipment used. Two reasons: First, most people I know are in awe about life in the large metropoles, and second, you can easily find plenty of freaks to pick and shoot.

Fullana shoots a lot of couples, with the intent to explore relationships and penetrate a subject's thought process. He often focuses his iPhone on bitter loners too. I believe he's definitely interested in interpersonal relationships and feelings. He also goes in great lengths to comment his photographs and the subjects shown, mainly about what he thought or felt while shooting. Little ephemeral stories and speculations that he's been struggling to invent about what went thru his subjects's minds at the very moment he's been capturing them on his CCD. I believe this thing is a bit of an overkill on his part. Had he been a pur-sang artistic photographer, he'd leave his pictures uncommented. That's what today's artists mostly do. Create an impression that triggers the viewer into thousands of thoughts. Like a Rochard test. And viewers, or art lovers adore doing exactly that. Interpret an artist's intentions hidden behind an artwork, and they often read stories and plots that most of the time are quite far from the true intentions of the artist, but it still feels like fun. I kid you not. I recently learned that from a close friend and field expert on subjects of art; I went thru some sort of epiphany, when I realized how true her thesis on the subject was indeed. It's so true that you can almost consider 'logical' gaps and 'unexplained' or 'irrational' space in works of art as the discriminant elements that separate them from the fakes or look-alikes. Can you believe that? I do now!

In yesterday's WWDC keynote Apple Senior VP Scott Forstall used the Flickr stats shown here to claim that the iPhone is becoming the most popular camera on the planet. Per the Flickr stats, at least. It is true that iPhone (especially its latest reincarnation, version 4.0) shoots very good photographs, with acceptable color balance, especially when the ambient light is of good quality. I had recently an iPhone 4.0 in some gardening venue as my only camera and shot flowers and gardens for about 3 hrs. The result was almost comparable to an average quality DSLR, and far better than many point-'n-shoots that I know. I've even printed a Blurb book with those pictures.

In other words, iPhoneography seems to be the new rage, and it's definitely here to stay. Your chance to artistic fame knocks at your door, folks. Stay alert to the opportunity.

How to become a Curator real quick!

2011-06-02T11:08:00.077+02:00

I joined Flickr during May 2005, two months after Yahoo bought the activity from Canadian Ludicorp. Six years later I must have uploaded about 12 thousand pictures organized in 260 sets and 11 Collections. I also participate in 27 groups, some of which I was invited to join by their administrators who came across my pictures by accident. If the stats Flickr reports are correct, then about 54 thousand views of my shots have been recorded to this day, but I am sure there are many redundancies in this number... mainly because of pictures that have been viewed multiple times by the same viewers. Far less viewers I had then than the number of views*. But definitely several thousand people saw at least one of my pictures. Now, this is not something to boast about. I know there are hundreds of thousands photographers out there with much more powerful stats than mine. So, ego of mine, calm down. You ain't too bad, but you ain't that good either. I also know there are thousands of my shots for which I was the only viewer to this day. These are not bad photographs, but as I post many of my pictures untitled, they are difficult to find by those surfers who navigate Flickr for fun. A couple of my pictures were used by individuals in their commercial brochures, one restaurant in Prague and a travel agency in Hawaii, US. Quite proud to see this! My own personal views of my own shots are not recorded in the Flickr stats, as I am permanently logged in, when I watch anything at all. I also got a 'pro' account, meaning that I am paying an annual fee as part of Flickr's Freemium business model. It's been a great experience.

With this background, I am embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what the concept of Flickr Galleries was. Flickr recently notified me that someone had used one of my photographs in one of his galleries. It wasn't the fist time this happened, but I never paid much attention to it. This time, curious to find out what this was about I went to Flickr itself. Well, it's like this. In Flickr you can still create and hold a membership account without necessarily posting any photographs. Maybe you don't like to shoot. Maybe you don't like to share. Whatever. However, what you could do is express yourself via other people's creative work. You become a curator. Like curators normally do in musea and galleries, you undertake to set-up a show with Flickr photographs about a theme you come up with. You then search Flickr for candidate photographs about this theme, select those that you like the most, and expose them to your public. That's a Flickr Gallery. No more no less...

Interesting, quite interesting. With 5 billion** + photographs to select from, I believe each one of you could become a curator. Create a number of galleries and express yourselves via other people's photographic work. Often, known curators are as famous celebrities as the known artists themselves. You could even create artistic galleries with photographs of people who'd be the last on the planet to be considered artistic by any measure. As an example, go explore my own sets and create a few cool galleries with the pictures you find. Being neither an artist nor a curator, I consider myself totally incapable of doing this myself, that is, select 18 single photographs out of my 12 thousand total, and create a single 'artistic' gallery around a theme. So, be my guest! I might publish a book with your Flickr Galleries based upon my own photographic 'work'. I only hope it doesn't end-up being a one-blank-page book though...

So, next time you feel kinda bored, instead of surfing into your usual pastimes, like your social networks, sports and fashion, the Huffington Post etc, go express yourself artistically. Open up an account on Flickr, if you don't have one yet, and create some Galleries. Comment them and advertise them to your friends via your social networking activity, Twitter, Facebook, etc... in other words, have some fun, for a change! And don't forget to send me (via comments on this blogpost) links to your samples of creative expression. I think I know some people who could be very good at this!

________________________________________________
* OMG, I'm talking like Master Yoda now!
** Fkickr stats reported in September last year

Greece cracking again?

2011-05-31T12:05:00.025+02:00

This post is actually something I wrote for me. In case I forgot in years from now, and wondered what happened, I'd come back here and read what my thinking was then... I mean now. So, if you got something better to do, you don't have to stay and read further. It's probably the right thing to do. Because, if on top of this, you happen to live in Greece, and you get upset with what I'm suggesting you as well as the rest of you are doing, you might want to chase me down for my thoughts and opinions. Either way, you are not going to change your country's fortunes by beating the messenger. Or shoot him...

The question is, would the European Commission and Central Bank, primarily responsible with their policies enforced upon member states, mostly conform the wants and needs of the most powerful members and their lobbyists, allow an impoverished member of its family to default on its debt? Would they move in to force the Greeks, for instance, to restructure their debt, or will they bail them out again? By supplying fresh cash, and keep doing the bailing out until the cows come home? Who knows? In the latest developments concerning an upcoming June debt payment by Greece most member states and the Commission favor provision of the necessary financial assistance to the Greek government. With exception of Germany of course (no news there), the Netherlands (alsjemenou!), and Finland (one of EU's tiny nations decided to roar as well).

For governments in trouble there are usually two possible public debt restructuring scenarios: Either renegotiate loan maturity terms for paying back debt, and by so doing one 'buys' much needed time, or simply tell creditors to shove it and kiss their principal good-bye (parts or maybe the whole). In private business in general, restructuring could also be effected by conversion of debt to company stock. But governments are not stock holding companies; no share capital shown in the liabilities columns of their balance sheets. What they do own though is a participation through traditional stock in private companies that they (partly) nationalized and own from long time ago. They do usually own the assets of their national patrimony as well (the Acropolis and Parthenon, for instance)

What would consequently happen if Greeks decided to withhold payments to their creditors in the immediate future? You know, it happened before in the (recent) history of mankind. Who's gonna suffer then most? Simple answer: Everybody. The global Economy is like a red thread that keeps everyone connected with everyone else, the actual thread (or blood-cells) being the money stream, interlinking governments with their citizens, and the companies the latter work for. Say for instance the Greek cabinet comes out in a few days and declares: As a sovereign state, We decided and We command (I like these 'Royalty-inspired' plural forms in Central Authority public statements - they add 'weight' to the content) that We shall not pay back a diddly freakin' squat of our June 2011 debt of so many billions of sweet lovely euro's, na-na-na-na-naaaa-na! (I hope you can properly pronounce and sing the na-na-naaaa's).

First, those who'll go deep under water (big time!) are most of the large domestically operating Greek Banks. Because traditionally, it is them who keep most of their own investments placed in government "risk-free" (you bet) paper. Who can get a better spread, short term, (leading to double digit yields) that Greek Authorities are paying their bond creditors these days? You'd be a fool not to buy yourself massively in such instruments, and then think, oh what's the risk?... too bloody Big to fail! So, in a heartbeat, we'll get the entire Greek Financial system on its knees. Ouch! Their economy will collapse and common citizens in the streets will start a 'revolution' by plundering shops and stealing anything that moves in order to survive just another day. Viva la Revolución! Will give KKE's SecretaryAleka Papariga much wanted wet dreams... She already declared "Bankruptcy has begun!" Like she knew what she's talking about, that is, but that's another matter.

Is that all? Are you kidding me? It only started, mate! Remember Lehman Bros? Remember what happened to the UBS, DB, SG, BNP-Paribas, Dexia, ING, RBS, and Barclays of this world? How many governments didn't step in then, only three years ago, to bail out the failing European financial landscape because of the Lehman Bros collapse? Banks would have simply vanished from the face of the earth, like in a modern-day Souli dance, if governments hadn't intervened with our dimes and cents (that is yours and mine, lads, good and obedient tax-payers...) We now got a Whole bleeding country for crying out loud (and another three -PIS- waiting right behind) with the best part of 400B Greece's euros (half a trillion US?) public debt defaulting its debt payments. We'll all start riding bicycles again, mark my words. Welcome back to the Stone Age, folks. At least, I hope we can keep our iPads, but we still need to find ways to charge them, nevertheless.

In conclusion, despite their current bullshit, the Germans and the Dutch, and those pathetic Fins, will eventually need to step in as well, and bail out the Greeks again in a few weeks' time. Is tough Angela M. going to stop the bail-out and burry beloved Deutschland into a financial tsunami? No way! In the meantime renewed insecurity will hit the markets again, the VIX will start climbing, speculators and hedge fund managers will start shorting anything that moves, and wealthy capitalists are gonna get richer once more (remember, fortune favors the bold and wealthy). Hallelujah.

What is really happening back in Greece to solve the basic problems, in the meantime? Not much, I am afraid. Unfortunately, the problem eventually needs to be solved, in any case. The issue is, it is so bleedin' basic that the currently imposed short term remedies by the über powerful and omnipresent Troika cannot do a single thing to help the issue. On the contrary. These measures dig the country deeper and deeper, until it emerges with its thousands of beautiful islands and all up in China. Meltdown!

To tackle the problem requires character, education, long term investments, infrastructure; concepts that remain to be seen whether they'll ever become part of the modern Greek vocabulary. Success in Greece is measured by how much a dick-swinger you are with cash and wealth that either your ancestors (often illegally) sneaked away, or you done the same in your time. Mind you, the type of fiscal and otherwise corruption we witness happening in Greece for thousands of years, we also see here in our central European countries as well, incl. dear Angela's Germany. Only problem, what happens to be an exception in our geographies, is the rule back in Greece. It happens all the time. As unbelievable as it sounds, an average Greek is born, and also learns early in his/her life, to be selfish and 'efficient'. Efficiency, like in 'maximum leverage'. Receive the most by doing the least. A Greek usually knows more than anyone else about any subject, and mostly cares via all sorts of machinations about his/her own good and his/her own loved ones. Greeks don't care much about the community they live in, neither the damage they cause to the environment. Positive voices in that direction are appallingly faint! For anything average Greeks decide to do they first think "να βρούμε ένα μέσο". Meaning, let's find someone who can help get out of the 'queue', where the rest are sweating, and get on top of it. Bend the rules and get to our objective real fast, and who cares about the implications to others? 'Queue respect' is again another concept Greeks forget to add to their daily vocabulary. And in their stride to bypass the 'queues' and bend the rules they even neglect elementary characteristics of human dignity too. They typically 'κλαίγονται', in other words, they pretend to be needy, suffering of some evil, having thousands of good reasons to bypass the rules and regulations. Every Greek does that! Young or old, healthy or sick. Because they are smarter, ain't they? You bet!

They simply lack character. They saw too many role models in their life get away with murder and reach 'success'. Their experiences are flooded with examples. In a recent trip to my birthplace, Takis, a good friend from my youth, had a story of financial abuse for almost every building raised in the last 30 years, public or private, that we drove by. Greeks also love to complain about everything. If they only got at the PM's seat for a day. They'd change the world. There are as many opinions in Greece as there are Greek a-holes (pardon my French). Bitter to admit. In fact, Greeks should be taught at school to use their hands and body more than they use their tongues. If Greeks decided to learn to do that for say, 10 percent more of the time, their GDP productivity would probably improve by thirty basis points. Honest!

Look for a moment at the (otherwise beautiful) picture I posted here. It shows recent demonstrations by a new class of revolting Greeks: The Anxious! The 'Anxious' are nowadays spending time daily at the Syntagma Square 'revolting' against the government and hoping for a better future. Let's do some simple math for argument's sake. Suppose there are 15K protesters out there (actually there are many more). Assume a big chunk is part of the labor force, say 2/3s... Suppose this lot spends 5 hours a day lazying in Syntagma square and shouting, before getting bored and going home to do something useful with their lives. Like repair the house, do some real work to earn a loaf, even do some gardening, clean the neighborhood streets, do some voluntary community work (dream on), shag the spouse (still a much more productive enterprise). The simple math sez, on a day like this, the best part of 50K person-hours, or (by the Central European standards of 36 hrs a week) 30.2 person-years of equivalent labor is LOST, gone and never coming back (I considered 46 labor weeks in a year by subtracting four vacation weeks and 2 weeks of public holidays like xmas and August the 15th). At an average salary cost of 30K a year for such a laborer, and a cost markup of say 30%, the mentioned lost labor leads to, give-'n-take, 1.2M euros of GNP. So, 15K Greeks lazying on a single day at Syntagma Square, achieving nothing useful at ALL (other than increasing their blood pressure and pissing off every-body else) strips a million euros out of the Nation's GNP. This is what is known as the large numbers effect. My model is overly simplified, of course. I didn't account for instance for the physical and emotional disruption the 'anxious' herd, and the ambient noise they cause, to those who actually do want to remain productive and do useful stuff. Those who live in Greece know that my simple model, applied to the real numbers behind the current socioeconomic and political turmoil add to much more than a million lost a day. No wonder Greek debt keeps galloping with pride at the speed of sound higher and higher.

Where's the solution? I wish I knew! I might become PM one day if I did. Nor any of the fat salaried non-tax paying Brussels based Eurocrats know a diddly squat about it either, I am sure. There's no short term solution for sure. The country needs a serious shake-up from the ground up. Greece lacks the standards, the work ethics, the character. Without those, they also lack the infrastructure and business potential to build and produce, and therefore enhance their output numbers, and consequently their government's tax income. And as long they stay hooked on the Euro, their tourism income will suffer too. Pay 4.5 euros for a latte coffee? Why not? No wonder most of our tourists choose to enjoy the brilliant blue Greek waters and sun... from the other side. The Asia Minor (say modern day Turkey) coastline. But who cares. Not the rich Greeks, anyways. Many of them with loads of funds hidden in Swiss bank accounts and in Turkey/Cyprus banks, like the recent pastime dictates, they'll continue to import Cayennes, Mercs and BMW's, paying a price for those of north of 50K euros a pop! Greeks may often despise being seen as 'working' (labor is for the stupid) but they definitely know the latest fashion trends and brands, and all the tricks of the Western European and US beauty trade. Truth be told.

Do I despise them? I don't think so. I am one of them, you know, so how could I? It bleeds my heart to see them in this process of self-destruction, while they themselves remain too passive and indifferent to see and do the right thing. They wouldn't see it even if it hit them in the face. If I lived there, I'd probably be lust like them, thinking I am so right and the rest of the world is so wrong. And that "όλοι οι ξένοι μας αδικούνε".

What a mess. God protect us from the cluster-fuck of the four members of our European PIGS alliance. Inshallah.

A million tulips in Brussels, Belgium...

2011-04-17T07:48:00.019+02:00

If you like flowers, or at least your partner does, you can charm her/him with a visit here, at the chateau of Groot Bijgaarden, west of Brussels, just off the highway E40 to Oostende. I passed hundreds of times outside the venue in the past but never imagined the size of it, as I never visited it before in my life. This time though, the spouse was well informed (as always) and I was left in my ignorance thinking that my trip to Brussels would last as long as the planned visit to Sani for our Easter groceries: tsoureki, feta cheese, olive oil, tyropitas from the north-west of Greece, wine, lamb, and even melomakarona, and more goodies like that. Sani Imports is our Greek groceries supplier not far from the Brussels Center, at what they call the port of Brussels (yep, Brussels has got a (pathetic) port too, no comparison with Zeebrugge or Antwerp, folks).

On our way back, the spouse started her usual charming offensive, like, 'do you know how to get to Groot Bijgaarden', and 'you know there is a chateau with an open expo of thousands of tulips, they even showed on TV', etc... etc...etc... Long story short, instead of heading homewards, we ended up at the chateau ticket box to pay for our entrance fee, when deary spouse almost gave me a stroke by pretending to the cashier that we were seniors! I looked at her, ready to faint, and chuckled 'no f*cking way I am a freakin' senior'. The ticket lady, obviously a senior herself, said 'Seniors are above 60, I'm afraid... you don't look to me to be seniors, I'm afraid'. Didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and there we paid our regular adult tickets (nice try, my dear...), and entered the garden with a million tulips exposed along hundreds of thousands of more blossoming flowers. Obviously, I was visibly p*ssed as I was totally unprepared for that beauty and had left my serious photographic gear back home, with no other than the iPhone 4. What the heck. I'd shoot no matter what with.

It's difficult to describe the beauty, especially me who'll be the last person on earth being able to do this and keep you unbored and awake at the same time. Instead, see my shots at Flicker. Well, yes, I took these pictures with a bleedin' iPhone, believe it or not. I took about three hundred of them, of which I had to drop a few dull and unsharp shots, and quite a few with red tinted tulips, as the dynamic range of reds is pathetic on a cheap camera. Yellow and whites were descent though, with some red and orange here and there. Of course, Lightroom did the rest. There was no visit at the chateau, only the garden.

The whole thing was created by a certain Dutchman, Bakker is the name, famous for his tulip catalogs and business. He was there in person too, and the spouse enjoyed talking to him for a few minutes, while I was shooting the entrance to the chateau. Weather was great, not too sunny to force me shoot HDR, and the colors were stunning. Entrance was 10 euro for adults, 9 for seniors and maybe less for students and children. There were more foreigners than Belgians as I had heard all sorts of gibberish (Eastern Europe mainly) being spoken around me, other than our regular French and Dutch. Brussels, capital of Europe, you see...

College students

2011-04-08T08:53:00.011+02:00

I'm blogging this out of sheer frustration. Lemme explain. I'm teaching this class you see that spans an entire semester two hours a week. It's called Innovation and Marketing, but that's just a title. I structured it to be all about the salesman's profession. That is, all you got to know to become a rather successful sales person, working for medium and large size companies including multinational corporations. It's an optional course that 1st and 2nd Master's year students are supposed to attend. We are referring to the University of Antwerp, this is.

I've been already teaching this course for the last three years, and I always had around 20 - 25 students each term. However, this year I been shocked to find 45 in the registered list. In my first session there were about 30 that showed up. Ever since less than half of them attend the course sessions; a group of about 15 guys and gals showing up no matter what. 'No matter what' includes splendid spring weather and unusually high temps for this time of the year.

Although the subject is all about sales, the class is structured around a number of sessions that are self contained... you don't have to follow session 3 to attend session 5 for instance. Maybe some subjects span over two linked sessions. That's OK. We have sessions about the sales profession (how they get paid and commissioned, how they work, plan, forecast, etc...), about Business Modeling, Target Account and Solution Selling (two known methods), Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne's human profiling theory), Selling to Government, Negotiating Skills and more like that. Pretty useful stuff, right?

Dutch is not my native language and I guess in subjects like that, having lots of English terminology, makes it pretty hard to teach these sessions non-stop for two hours... so maybe my teaching skills might be average or below, at times. Ok, fine. But if you never attended any session you won't be able to pull that as the reason for not attending, will you? This ain't an excuse for skipping sessions, kids.

In various occasions I asked those attending whether they had seen any of the subjects I teach in other classes. Each and every time they told me they hadn't. So, to most of them attending, this must be all new stuff. Why not come to class then? My students study 'commercial engineering'. In other words, pretty neat degree and quite suitable for junior management positions in any industry your heart desires. Most will end up in such jobs in say a few months after graduation. Don't they just want to learn about a few things they'll run against when they do show up at 8:30 each morning at the office? I just don't get it. Do their parents know this? Does anybody care?

I did a huge mistake. I told them that for exams I'll ask them to write a business modeling paper. So they'd never have to learn and memorize any 'theory'. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't come to class, does it? It's even a better motivator to come to class, so you'd never have to read the Powerpoints I'm posting as the session materials.

I'm about to decide how to do the final exams test and how to score them. I'm looking for advice. I don't have a names list with their portrait pictures, and I won't shoot any pictures in class of those regularly attending to know who does the right thing and who doesn't. But then, am I right to assume that those who don't attend are no good? For instance, last year during exams, I saw a dude showing up that I saw attending sessions only once in 13 weeks. He told me he was working to earn the money necessary for his studies. I couldn't check the truth of that argument but I respect those who have to fund their studies on their own. He did a great test and I gave him an above average score, but I still thought, is he really any good, or how can he get a descent degree if he never attended class? This year, at the new Academic Year reception, I saw him among my other colleagues. I'm like "WTF is this guy doin' here?!?!". A friend and colleague sighs: "He's probably on a post graduate program... I think I picked-up something like that about him". I'm like OMFG, but then, who ever said he had to attend my sessions to qualify for a PhD? So, my ego wants one thing, reality settles for another.

Between you and me, I don't like large classes, and this year's current attendance suits me fine. Students talk too much during sessions nowadays. It's very annoying. With more students in the classroom more are tempted to start surfing the net and chat with each other. So the less in a room the better for all. Problem is, I'll have to go thru all of their 45 papers and I feel shitty knowing that there have been at least 25 to 30 percent who never showed up. Or 'sent their pussycat', instead... like the Dutch saying goes...

Like I said, all advice is welcome. Especially from any of you being students, yourselves.

About troikas and more...

2011-02-14T12:46:00.029+01:00

Ever since Greece was bailed out by the IMF and the ECB, forcing the Greek cabinet to implement severe austerity measures, the term troika became a word of evil used by local media and politicians as a curse against Greece's creditors. In fact, what Greeks call "the troika" are the representatives of three international bodies, namely, the EC, the ECB and the IMF. All three (the troika) visit Athens during regular intervals to examine progress made in implementing austerity measures and comment upon it. The three 'wise' troika men (or teams) visit, analyse, and express 'best practice' opinions.

In their latest visit a few days ago the troika expressed consultative opinions about strategies the Greek government could employ to recover funds and pay outstanding debt via privatization and sale of government owned businesses and property. I thought they even suggested to sell some tourist property (few beaches here and there in Greece's thousands km long coastlines). What do you expect them to suggest otherwise? I mean, what else does the country have to offer? Raw materials? Gold? Oil? Seawater? Salt? There's no industry or agriculture left anyways...

Responding to troika's recommendations, and per the common Greek phrase "who faced God Almighty and hasn't been shit scared?", every newspaper and politician around jumped to point a blaming finger towards those miserable troika members and accuse them that it was not their job to interfere with Greek affairs... Makes you wonder...

Ok. Fine. Consider this: If there were no EC, ECB and IMF intervention, creditors would have stopped pumping funds back to Greece and buying Greek treasury bills at reasonable interest rates, and the country would have ceased to exist economically in a heartbeat. No more goods could be imported from abroad as there would be no cash to pay suppliers. Airplanes and busses, not to forget private cars, would come to a halt without fuel indeed. Those with donkeys and mules would be the lucky ones... No kiddin'! There would be no cash to pay for public infrastructure maintenance. Law and order? Forgetaboutit! Where's the cash to pay officers of the Law? Without fuel no heating, no electricity, no cooking. Jurassic park with only the dinosaurs missing. In addition, Greece's creditors would force all legal means available internationally to repossess their unpaid loans consumed by the Greeks. In other words, International Law would intervene to return to Greece's creditors what belongs to them, in nature or any other form possible! Not only the Elgin marbles, but the entire Parthenon would risk being moved to the Louvre or the British Museum, or even Beijing. The country would be an item of liquidation and ridicule. Apparently present day Hellenes have difficulty to either grasp the gravity of their situation or actually reconcile with the idea of national bankruptcy. Too naif to step out of their dream world and face reality? Who knows... most likely!

Troika members are simple civil servants doing their job. They are supposed to watch the Greek cabinet's management practices of a country in quasi-liquidation, and express opinions about how to improve this restructuring process. Nothing more, nothing less. Their opinion is of consultative nature, not binding in any ways. Not when they are in the middle of a reviewing process, anyway. Binding recommendations will have to carry a lot more weight and authority, and can only be forced upon the Greeks after thorough politics get played behind and in front of international scenery and debates. After their regular progress reviews, troika members will typically travel back and report their findings. Whatever populist Greek media and politicians think and publicly communicate, aiming at feeding local consumption, is totally irrelevant. In a world of 500 million EU Europeans and 6.5 billion earth-people, Greece and its ethnos (including most of us in the diaspora) is less than a rounding error! Like the joke goes, when some Chinese official asked once how many Greeks there were, and got as a response "about 11 million", he replied: "Which hotel are they stayin'?".

Compats of mine, wake up and go back to work instead of striking and burning down the house; pretending nothing will have to change, and that you can continue to preserve your lifestyle at your creditors' expense. Don't be too easily forgiving upon your guilty co-citizens, those civil servants, politicians and private businessmen (doctors on top), who brought down the nation by their abuses and corruption; think of the Chinese 'Communists', who are not afraid to literally condemn to death and execute corrupt individuals (incl. cabinet ministers), to set the example. You don't have to shoot yours dead these days if you don't want to (based on human rights grounds), but putting them behind bars for life and keeping them there (like you did with the junta colonels in the seventies), and confiscating most of what they've been stealing for years could help a lot. As incredible as it may sound, you seem to 'respect' and envy your villains instead; you often use them as role models for mimicking, because you think they are kinda cool "mangas" while continue screwing the system shamelessly. And please, start teaching your offsprings the much needed 'fairness' and 'integrity' as key virtues to build upon the foundation of your future social lives. Because without virtues, as Aristoteles taught you, you better quit the EU and join some 'funny' regimes in the third world instead, as their practices are very much reminiscent of yours...

Deleting a Facebook account... next to Mission Impossible

2011-02-05T10:59:00.000+01:00

Facebook is one of these services that when you decide to get out of it, they still piss around with your information for ever, even if you terminate your account and want them to wipe out your data for good. It appears you have to navigate to this page to be able to wipe out everything, and even then, they'll take their time, i.e. fourteen days (jee, that's pretty blistering fast these days) before everything's out for good. In these fourteen days you need to stay off Facebook like the pest. Watch out that other services of yours that you use on computers or mobile devices (for instance Flipboard on iPad) don't log you in without you realizing. Because if you log in and use your service, then Facebook in the background pretends you don't wanna get out and the 14 days never come. How sneaky is this? If you don't follow this page as I mentioned earlier, and do what most people follow (not easy to find for casual users), then your membership remains for ever. Being so hard to terminate helps baby-face Zuckerberg and his Facebook Gold Mountain accumulate millions of naif user accounts to show to the world that they got hundreds of millions of members. Duh? Despite my liking of the movie and script writer's Sorkin phenomenal work I still claim that Zucker and his siblings are plain evil. Who based their success on hundreds of millions double digit IQ below average casual Net users.

Read this blog for more details on termination.

Gabby and her iPad.

2011-02-03T16:26:00.001+01:00

Watch this video with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the woman shot by an assassin in Tucson, Arizona a short while before the incident. In the meantime she is doing "rigorous" speech therapy every day and her recovery is progressing — thanks at least a little bit in part to her favorite gadget: the iPad.

A few weeks before the congresswoman was shot in a Tucson, Ariz., rampage, she told The Daily that she bonded with her husband, Mark Kelly, over their new iPad. Giffords and her husband enjoyed sitting in bed with their tablet computer, she told The Daily in an in-camera interview conducted in the rotunda of the Capitol.

During her recovery, Giffords has been using her iPad to look at pictures — which her neurologist, Dr. Michael Lemole, told reporters two weeks ago was a “fantastic” advance as it showed “higher cognitive function.”

The Arizona lawmaker, who was shot in the head on Jan. 8, was transferred last week from intensive care to the TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, where neurosurgeon Dr. Dong Kim said she is recovering at “lightning speed.”

Read rest of the story here...

My fellow citizens got loads of humor...

2011-01-31T15:25:00.001+01:00

If you wanted to seriously plan your professional or private life in Greece (travel, meetings and such) make sure you check this URL. There's a large number of strikes and demonstrations laid out in the familiar Google calendar format. Pick up a month and, based on the latest news available, find out who and when goes on strike and/or organizes street protests. Pretty busy times for our idle Greek workers. It's still great to learn that PM George Papandreou publicly announced yesterday that his European partners since recently raised their level of confidence in the nation and its fortunes. With this announcement he actually managed to break the previous world record of self deception: faking an orgasm while jerking off.

Bollywood goes bananas!

2011-01-31T14:14:00.000+01:00

Practical Wisdom

2011-01-29T17:41:00.018+01:00

I came across this TED video by accident the other day. It suddenly seemed to give an answer somehow to a question I have been struggling with a lot in recent months. That's certainly ever since I found out thru hearsay and TV reports about the abuses and corruption taking place regularly (and not exceptionally) in my fatherland, where almost all citizens seem to have lost confidence and trust in their central governing authorities, albeit democratically elected.

The question is the following. What does it take to do the right thing? When elected politicians take seat in positions of central authority in a state with neither sufficient nor effective checks and balances, how can you trust that the leaders will do the right thing? In other words, that they'll make decisions aiming at the common good for all citizens, and not favoring a particular point of view or third party based on personal (financial or otherwise) or (future) political gains (like vote promises). In Greece right now only a handful among common citizens believe that any given politician and/or agent of central authority (eg. the bureaucrat civil servants acting behind a web of regulations and laws of immense complexity) are any truthful or just. Almost everybody is convinced that politicians and civil servants are corrupt in various shades of gray and that every central decision made is unfair and has multiple (financial or otherwise) beneficiaries all the way from the top to the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid. How can you go on living a normal life under a regime like that, please tell me.

Schwartz rightly claims that adding more rules and incentives to a system in order to increase fairness and ensure justice never solves the problem. Like water (or air for that matter) so 'capable' of 'finding a crack' to escape (or leak), such is the skill of any given human in a position of authority to find blind spots and bypass regulations, old or new ones. If those with authority are unwise and/or corrupt, then there is no way one can ever trust central authority. One needs something else to make sure justice is done. Schwartz offers a number of great examples to prove this point. The panacea is something known as 'practical wisdom' (phronesis in Greek).

This is the kind of thing that is extremely hard to find these days among Greek politicians and civil servants, let alone most managers and entrepreneurs running private companies. Ironically, it is equally extremely odd to think that Greece is also the country that brought up the man who developed the theory behind these wise concepts, already 2400 years ago, namely Aristotle. None of that is ever taught in any class of modern Greek schools anymore, with possible exception, I suppose, few specialized classes in philosophy and alike. A good friend from back home, whom I pointed to the Schwartz pitch @ TED, said in despair 'I feel so bad that none of that was ever shown to me'. I feel kinda like the same.

In the Greek news bulletin today I heard something that made me smile, bitterly! Greek PM Papandreou mentioned publicly that the nation's credibility is gaining extra browny points among other EU partners. He must be really lying in his face saying something like that, or he must otherwise be brain-dead! What can I say? I'd like to know one single example of improvement that would make anyone in the Brussels based Eurocracy believe that Greeks now deserve to be more trusted than before. Is it because they don't burn down the house anymore in street riots? C'm on... get a life, dude!

Back to basics is actually what they really need. In order to get out of its current misery our entire nation needs to find ways and learn to cherish and live by the concept of practical wisdom. To always do the right thing not because there is risk to get caught and punished if you do wrong, but because doing the right thing is a fundamental law of natural order that will guarantee happiness and prosperity for all. There you have it... "you may say I'm a dreamer... but I'm not the only one..."

Arab authoritarians!

2011-01-28T19:56:00.005+01:00

One by one totalitarian regimes in the Arab world are shutting down their Internet connections to block out their people from the rest of the world and keep them in the dark. Their G-Men are shivering. In the west for years we've all been turning the other side and pretended loving the emperor's glistering new clothes. Well, there weren't any. Syria, Egypt and I guess before long a whole score of others in the Arab peninsula are doing the good ol' totalitarian thing: Cut off comms and the internet. Was about bloody time these countries' demos revolted against their abusive 'leaders'. Really bloody time. Wish the millions of abused and now revolting all the best of luck. Kids, go teach them bastards some lesson they'll never forget. Allah be with you. إن شاء الله

Davos interviews

2011-01-28T19:38:00.004+01:00

Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum02 at livestream.com

Terry posing with Fixed Gear bike

2011-01-22T11:20:00.002+01:00

Terry posing with Fixed Gear bike, originally uploaded by vassily kritis.

Who would have ever imagined a family member of ours posing for pro shooting?

A Greek Tragedy

2011-01-17T15:28:00.034+01:00

In a recent episode of 'Al Tsandiri News' the incomparable comedian/actor Lakis Lazopoulos mentioned: 'Τα παιδεία παιζει' - per an Ancient Attica dialect, and 'οι γέροι πεινάει'- per a modern IKA dialect - IKA is the employees' national social security organization that pays pensions, healthcare and unemployment benefits. A bitter truth about a country that, having recovered civil liberties in the aftermath of the fall of the colonels' regime in 1974, went on to create a modern socio-economic and political 'system' comparable only to third world Republics, where corruption is the rule rather than the exception. A rather heavy verdict? I didn't think so...

On January 2nd, 2011 the Belgian Canvas TV channel in it's Panorama episode showed a report about the Greek reality that to me was a simple confirmation of what I feared was happening from hearsay of friends' descriptions during recent conversations. This 'reality' came to being during the course of the last 35 years, right after the fall of the colonel junta. And the architect of this monumental clusterf@ck: Andreas Papandreou, still a semi-God to many compatriots. Along with his ruling party, PASOK.

One can blame many macro factors leading to the Greek disaster. For instance, Rolf Krause, a German TV journalist, interviewed in the Panorama episode, mentioned that nobody ever imagined during the Maastricht summit that countries like Greece would have ever been allowed to participate in the Eurozone. Differences in its national economy and culture with the rest of the core Eurozone countries were so humongous that you could just predict disaster if Greece was ever allowed to participate.

But, what kind of modern day aphorism is this? Greek Economy and Culture can not sustain Euro participation along France, Germany and the Benelux! Why not? Where is the problem? Do average Greeks have 'lesser' intellectual capabilities and are unable to develop a welfare state like those in Central and Western Europe? Are Greeks kinda stupid then? Double digit IQs? Mentally disabled? Uneducated? Lazy? Morons?

Well it turns out that none of these epithets is true. Just like Ancient "Golden Age" Greeks, modern Greek minds excel in whatever they do and rank among the best on the planet. Pick-up any top class university in the world and you'll find many Greeks leading key disciplines as faculty members, undergrads and postgrads. Same for Research Institutes in both Europe and the US. In some of the greatest schools known to man Greek faculty and student communities flourish (MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Sorbonne...). In business internationally one finds Greeks in leading positions almost everywhere. There's nothing wrong with the Greek mind and mental capabilities. No sir! It's as bright as anyone else's! How about the Arts then? Same thing! From literature to visual arts to music to anything your heart desires. The problem is not there. Not in the Greek neurons and their synapsing and brainy networking. The problem is in their 'mentality', ego-centrism and sheer arrogance that seem to flourish especially when back in the fatherland, under the Greek blue sky and the azure of the Aegean waters!

Kostas Karkagiannis

"Both the deficit and national debt are problems that were gradually created through the years as result of a social contract between the Government and its citizens", mentions Kostas Karkagiannis, a Brussels based Greek journalist. This is where Governing Parties (mostly PASOK in the last 35 years) created hundreds of thousands of new civil servant jobs in exchange for future election votes. Masses of people were hired into government positions based upon their political affiliation and promise for future votes rather than on merit and skills. Concrete examples I heard about this specific point, mentioned to me by trustworthy friends, touch the notion of absurd. You just don't wanna know how bad it is. "In 1984 we suddenly got an increase in government jobs by 400.000 new positions", mentions Prof. Karkatsoulis, Administrative Law. "More than 50 percent of those positions were fulfilled based purely on political maneuvering", he added.

"In the last 6 - 7 years", mentions Prof. Stournaras, an Economist, "more than 150 new government departments and directorates were created to accomodate political favors.". As absurd as it may sound, representatives of workers unions claim that there "are not enough civil servants yet", at least not in some departments. ADEDY's Despina Kutsumba claims that not enough tax collectors are available to collect taxes. Also more people are needed for schools and hospitals. Amidst the current crisis indeed, union reps still believe that there are not enough Civil Servant jobs available yet! Ronald Reagan's remains must turn upside down in his grave. His famous aphorism "we are from government and we are here to help you" seems to be a welcome concept in Greece. However, in a counter argument to the so claimed 'lack' of sufficient Public Services jobs, Karakatsoulis mentioned that 180 thousand servants are employed in the Greek Education sector. Only problem, you can't find many of them in the classrooms. They are 'lost' in the system. They get paid but don't have to be in an office or elsewhere. By Western standards: Sheer theft of the State that only deserves sufficient and effective prison sentence without parole.

Yannis Ragkousis
Interior Minister - Current Cabinet

Interior Minister Rangousis admits this is the fault of the Politicians. "They used to hire and put in positions whoever they wanted, where they wanted and as many as they wanted", he admits. "But hiring didn't stop there", he continues. Politicians also helped promote those same hires to higher levels in the management hierarchy without further consideration of skills or merits. The result of this was to arrive at a structure where departments existed (or still exist), with the necessary positions of department heads but with no actual subordinate employees working in the 'department'. Directorates General were equally created without departments belonging to them, just plain empty. "All this because of a promise made to someone by a Politician for a Director General position!" Ragkousis admits. "Baptise someone into a Director General!" he says (sic). A position that was naturally accompanied by a more than generous pay package... goes without saying! I gotta say, quite brave of Mr. Ragkousis to admit that much while serving as the Interior Minister in a government whose ruling party (being his own as well) are largely responsible for this mess! And him as well. He seems to visibly ignore that he too is part of the problem, and not of the solution.

"If PM Papandreou decided to eliminate the wrongdoings and got rid of those catapulted into Public Service positions (via windows and backdoors, in Prof. Stournaras words)", Karkagiannis claims, "he'd risk his political future, whereas, if he does nothing, the nation will risk bankruptcy". My guess is, he'll ask every single servant to contribute via package cuts to avoid firing the powerful 'nephews of uncle Nepos' and lose votes, so that everyone stays put and each and everyone pays for the wrongdoings of the few. Compromise à la Greque! Well done Georgie boy!

Not earlier than last month has the Greek government for the first time almost managed to count (via focused census) the total number of civil servants active in the country. To their credit, I heard they used various smart tricks to achieve that. Eventually, census results indicated that about one quarter of the active working population works in Public Service. 'This may still look like a reasonable ratio compared to various Scandinavian countries and Germany" Prof. Stournaras adds, "however, in those countries you really have efficient Public Services, which is not the case in Greece at all!" "Many Civil Servants are good", he says, "but far too many are either incompetent, not well trained and not adding value to the system. That's due to the lack of sufficient controls, lack of merit based career progression and lack of compensation progression based on performance record". "Ten years ago", adds Prof Karkatsoulis, "the government launched a special bonus for productivity improvement. Before long every single civil servant claimed that bonus which was eventually paid to everyone. " Cool! This is what my Greek compatriots think of as motivational bonuses for productivity increases. Smart-asses.

Most civil servants are permanent employees, meaning, they can't be laid-off. Problem is their comp is often multiples of what gets paid in the private sector. As an example, a locomotive driver earns on average the best part of 5K euro monthly. Compared to that, a college professor only earns 3K euro basic salary. Let's all go drive trains in Greece then. I didn't even know there were any... Such an appalling network and service they operate. Don't mistake them to Swiss Railways for sure... Salaries paid in state controlled banks are triple the amount paid for equivalent jobs in the private sector. If a new Public Service job gets posted for fulfillment nowadays, even with a 30% comp reduction in the last 12 months, candidates would still kill-for and flock to the opportunity. Why not? It's Greek style El Dorado, innit? "Who wants to become an entrepreneur if one could secure a salary and career like this", Stournaras admits. I don't blame him.

Union activist Despina Kutsumba.
In the WANTED poster it is written "... the jerk who stopped
the PM and told him that he was ready to offer a full month
salary to save the country. Reward 5M Euros"

To stimulate entrepreneurship you need regulatory administrative processes that are straightforward and a system that runs efficiently. In the country I live (Belgium), it only takes a few days to create a new company. The rules are minimal, controls are focused and efficient, and the system simply works. Paperwork is subminimal: A 3-year business plan, plus education certificates to make sure the entrepreneur can add and subtract numbers (sic), and understands the difference between profit and loss (no kiddin') and a balance sheet. In Greece it may take you up to several years to work thru the system and start a new business. You need to involve 7 to 10 different agencies and get thru their approval machinery only to start something real small. The bureaucracy is made extremely complex: "100.000 additional ministerial decisions in recent years and related procedural amendments to regulate issues that are already being regulated by 3500 laws in existence", adds Prof. Karkatsoulis. The problem is 'political', says Kostas Karkagiannis, because in order to 'work' the system you need a bureaucrat who knows authorized apparatchiks and the rules of the workflow, and how to cut through, for an undisclosed and unregulated 'fee' of course, goes without saying. That's where the eternal Greek concept of φακελλακια comes to fruition. The word means 'small sized envelopes' (but capable of hiding a hefty amount of Euro banknotes, preferably of large nominal values). Call it bribe, or kickback, or discretionary marketing... Greeks call it the 'fakellakia'. And fakellakia help Greeks not only through government agencies, but also hospitals (especially hospitals and doctors) and educational institutions (for obtaining degrees and/or getting accepted in faculty). As for the doctors, only one third is considered 'clean' and acting per their Epocrates oath. For the other two thirds, money talks (and bullshit walks). The size of the fakellakia economy, the color of gray or black, and certainly falling outside the radar screen of fiscal authorities represents a humongous percentage of the total GDP. It's here where Greeks have indiscriminately turned into a rule what others in the Western World do on an extremely exceptional basis. The saying goes, if you don't pay a doctor a reasonable bribe he/she will let you suffer in pain and risk your life. Epocrates and his oath are turning in their grave. Who could have ever imagined. Well done folks! Here's to you! Proud to be born Greek...

Union activist Kutsumba claims corruption in Greece is like an inverted pyramid. Meaning, lowest rank servants receive small amounts whereby people at the top receive bigass chunks, tens of thousands of euros to hundreds of thousands. Ask Siemens for details. Kutsumba also adds an interesting factoid. Because 'bribing' is 'illegal' (sic) you need to be 'protected' internally by the dude or gal above you up the hierarchy scale. So the system is endemically and permanently rotten. Well done dear PASOK and Andrea Megale! You cracked it right on this time! What does PASOK stand for, again? 'SO' for Socialist you said? Cool!

All being said, how does our beloved fatherland rank among others in corruption terms? Transparency International ranks us (with 3.5 points) at the bottom of EU below Romania and Bulgaria, and on equal foot as (Mendellin Cartel) Colombia. Danemark scores 9.3 and is considered the least corrupt country in Europe. Here's to you Harald Blåtand. In conclusion, can we just say that Greece is 3 times more corrupt than Danemark unless the TI scale... gets logarithmic, in which case... OMG! What's extremely hilarious, as well as arrogant, is that average Greeks don't consider bribing an abnormal activity. They blame Ottoman cultural reasons inherited during the occupation by the Turks, where bribes was part of everyday life in all the geographic regions where they ruled. Sweet excuse, innit? Blame the Turks! Or ...Canada, for that matter (I stole this from South Park).

In the words of Karkagiannis, Greece has turned into an economy of few heroes and many villains, where only villains get rewarded.

Where will this all come to, I wonder. The IMF and the ECB along with other European leaders naively believe the problem can be fixed by some draconian cost cutting measures that they asked the Greek Cabinet to 'reluctantly' implement. What most seem to forget is that Greece is a country with very few valuable natural resources, a non-existent (say pathetic) industry (Greeks never managed to get one for millions of reasons), barely acceptable transport infrastructure, average level agriculture that is also extremely hard to maintain (in the meantime agricultural capacity has also literally 'perished' with the good 'help' of EU subsidies linked to output quotas and controls), and last but not least, tourism. Tourism had also been severely handicapped in recent years due to the rising cost of living relative to anywhere in the rest of the world due to the local use of the Euro. A coffee in Athens will cost you four to five Euros on average... I can buy three of those cups of coffee in a far better coffee bar with chocolates and cookies, in the shadow of a magnificent medieval building at the central square of the town I live here in Belgium. Go figure! In other words, there are not many income sources available for the government to tax and raise funds to pay back debt. 'There's sufficient money available' says PM Papandreou! Dream on, dude.

In the meantime, feedback I get from local Greek friends is more like, outside the obvious, not much is really happening or felt by average citizens, even many months after last spring's events. The riches or 'nouveau riches' still show off by buying expensive clothes and jewelry, and driving big ass German cars. Bribes and fakellakia continue to be on a daily order and (Greek) life is good! The sun still shines like never before... The same villains continue to rule the country (joined by new ones believe it or not) and continue to enrich themselves (in the name of PASOK and the fatherland), whereas scarce heroes become even more hard to find, they either give up their values altogether and join the flow of the villains (c'm on are we the ones to change the world?) or leave the country permanently seeking a better fortune abroad... to never look back.

How can a country that is used to this mode of operation for so long will ever give up their lifestyle and forget their old tricks? Some promising remedies I see: get them off the Euro for good, tax exceptionally the high net worth individuals to pay back a large chunk of the debt, let them devalue their new drachma and bring it at the right levels that will at least render tourism again and some agricultural output at competitive prices, and start from a bare ethical educational basis all over again. Education, education, education. Only with proper education and raising inside robust family values (preferably of the past) will the Modern Greeks ever learn again to respect law and order, as well as each other, rather than alone themselves.

UPDATE: Nikos A. pointed me to this lecture by Prof. Richard Wolff who taught economics classes many years ago to the current PM George Papandreou. A bitter and hilarious experience. Watch and have fun.

A wonderful clip

2010-12-17T10:26:00.005+01:00

Many thx to Mary for pointing me to this.

Update: This guy seems to be quite a celeb. Check him out at his homepage and even try his tool to create your own gapminder graphs. Supercool! Thanks to José for suggesting this.

Απίστευτος διάλογος στο γερμανικό περιοδικό Stern

2010-12-15T11:13:00.005+01:00

Rioting in Greece

I'm copying this from a message I received recently from a friend in Greece. I wish I had the time to translate it in English so that most readers could understand. The story goes about a German dude called Walter Wuellenweber who sent an open letter to the 'Greeks' about their financial clusterf*ck and the answer to that letter by a Greek civil servant. Allegedly both letters were published in the German Magazine Stern (The Star). Don't know whether this is a true event or a hoax. What presumably true though are the arguments used from both sides. Open up Webster's on the (Greek) word demagogy and you'll find Walter's and Ekpliktikos' (the author of the Greek answer) picture portraits.

"Η παρακάτω ανοιχτή επιστολή του Walτer Wuellenweber, προς τους Έλληνες

πολίτες, με τίτλο «Αγαπητοί μας Έλληνες», δημοσιεύεται σε πρόσφατο

τεύχος του γερμανικού εβδομαδιαίου περιοδικού, Stern. Ο υπέρτιτλος του

άρθρου αναφέρει: «Μετά τις τράπεζες, θα πρέπει τώρα οι Γερμανοί να

σώσουν και την Ελλάδα. Πρώτα έκαναν αλχημείες οι Έλληνες στο ευρώ και

τώρα, αντί να κάνουν οικονομίες, απεργούν».

Αγαπητοί Ελληνες, από το 1981 ανήκουμε στην ίδια οικογένεια. Μόνο που

εμείς έχουμε συνεισφέρει, όσο κανείς άλλος στο κοινό ταμείο, δηλαδή

γύρω στα 200 δις, ενώ εσείς έχετε, αντίθετα, εισπράξει κατά κεφαλήν,

όσα κανείς άλλος, δηλαδή σχεδόν 100 δις. Ουδέποτε λαός βοήθησε μέχρι

τώρα με τη θέλησή του, σε τέτοιο βαθμό, και για τόσο μακρύ διάστημα,

άλλον λαό. Είσαστε, κυριολεκτικά, οι πιο ακριβοί μας φίλοι.

Το ζήτημα πάντως είναι, ότι τελικά δεν εξαπατάτε μόνο τον εαυτό σας

αλλά κι' εμάς. Στην ουσία, ουδέποτε φανήκατε αντάξιοι του ευρώ, μιας

και παρά την εισαγωγή του, δεν καταφέρατε μέχρι τώρα να εκπληρώσετε τα

κριτήρια σταθερότητας. Στην ΕΕ είσαστε ο λαός που ξοδεύει τα

μεγαλύτερα ποσά σε καταναλωτικά αγαθά. Θα θέλαμε, ο πρωθυπουργός σας

Γ. Παπανδρέου να προχωρήσει στο πρόγραμμά του, όμως προφανώς αυτό δεν

το θέλετε εσείς, αφού συνεχίζετε απτόητοι, ν' απεργείτε. Μη μας λέτε

λοιπόν, ότι μόνο οι πολιτικοί ευθύνονται για την καταστροφή.

Εσείς έχετε εφεύρει τη Δημοκρατία κι' ως εκ τούτου θα πρέπει να

γνωρίζετε, ότι ο λαός είναι αυτός που κυβερνά κι' επομένως, έχει και

την ευθύνη. Κανείς δεν σας αναγκάζει να φοροδιαφεύγετε, να

χρηματίζεστε, ν' αντιδράτε σε κάθε συνετή πολιτική και να εκλέγετε

διεφθαρμένους πολιτικούς. Σε τελευταία ανάλυση, οι πολιτικοί είναι

λαϊκιστές και κάνουν, ότι τους πει ο λαός. Θα μας πείτε, βεβαίως, ότι

κι' εμείς οι Γερμανοί δεν είμαστε πολύ καλύτεροι, όπως θέλουν κάποιοι

να πιστεύουν. Κι' έχετε δίκιο.

Οι Έλληνες είναι εκείνοι, που μας είχαν δείξει το δρόμο της

Δημοκρατίας και της Φιλοσοφίας, καθώς και τις πρώτες γνώσεις Εθνικής

Οικονομίας. Τώρα μας δείχνετε και πάλι το δρόμο. Μόνο που αυτή τη

φορά, είναι λάθος δρόμος. Κι' από το σημείο που εσείς έχετε τώρα

φτάσει, δεν πάει παραπέρα.

Και η απάντηση που δόθηκε από ένα συμπατριώτη μας:

Αγαπητέ μου Walτer Wuellenweber, ονομάζομαι Γεώργιος Π. Ψωμάς. Είμαι

δημόσιος λειτουργός κι' όχι υπάλληλος, όπως κατά κόρον τα ΜΜΕ των

«συμπατριωτών» σου (μου) και άλλων «συμπατριωτών» σου (μου) αναφέρουν,

ως βρισιά και με περίσσεια χλεύη. Ο μισθός μου είναι 1.000. Το μήνα,

όχι την ημέρα, όπως ίσως σ' έχουν παρασύρει, να νομίζεις. Ούτε 1.000

λιγότερα από σένα.

Από το 1981 ανήκουμε στην ίδια οικογένεια. Μόνο που σας έχουμε

παραχωρήσει με αδιαφανείς όρους κι' έναντι αυτών των 200 δις που λέτε,

ότι μας δώσατε, το 40% περίπου των αμυντικών εξοπλισμών μας, το σύνολο

σχεδόν των εθνικών τηλεπικοινωνιών μας, την κατασκευή 2 μεγάλων

αεροδρομίων καθώς και πολλών χιλιομέτρων εθνικού οδικού δικτύου. Αν

ξεχνώ κάτι, ζητώ να με συγχωρέσεις. Σημειώνω, πως είμαστε από τους

μεγαλύτερους εισαγωγείς στα καταναλωτικά προϊόντα που παράγουν τα

εργοστάσιά σας.

Η αλήθεια είναι, πως δεν ευθύνονται μόνο η πολιτικοί μας γι' αυτή την

καταστροφή. Ένα μεγάλο μέρος της ευθύνης έχει και μια εταιρία

γερμανικών κυρίως συμφερόντων, η οποία τους λάδωνε, για ν'

αναλαμβάνει, όπως λέω παραπάνω, δημόσια έργα (βλ. C4Ι). Πιθανολογώ,

πως φταίνε και τα γερμανικά ναυπηγεία, τα οποία μας πούλησαν κάτι

υποβρύχια, που γέρνουν. Είμαι σίγουρος, ότι εσύ δεν με πιστεύεις

ακόμα, αλλά δείξε λίγο υπομονή και περίμενε, διάβασέ με, κι' αν δεν σε

πείσω, τότε διώξε με από την Ευρωζώνη, τον τόπο της Αλήθειας και της

Ευημερίας, του Δίκαιου και του Σωστού.

Λοιπόν Walτer, μισός αιώνας και πάνω πέρασε από τη λήξη του Β΄

Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, από τότε που η Γερμανία έπρεπε να ξοφλήσει τις

υποχρεώσεις της προς την Ελλάδα.

Οι οφειλές αυτές, που μόνον η Γερμανία αρνείται να ξοφλήσει στην

Ελλάδα (η Βουλγαρία και η Ρουμανία, τακτοποίησαν ήδη τις αντίστοιχες

υποχρεώσεις τους), συνίστανται:

α) Σε χρέη ύψους 80 εκατομμυρίων γερμανικών μάρκων, από τον Α΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.

β) Σε χρέη από τη διαφορά του κλήριγκ στο μεσοπόλεμο, ύψους

593.873.000 δολαρίων, που ήταν σε βάρος της Γερμανίας.

γ) Στα αναγκαστικά δάνεια, τα οποία συνήψε το Γ΄ Ράιχ από την Ελλάδα,

ύψους 3,5 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, στη διάρκεια της κατοχής.

δ) Στις επανορθώσεις, που οφείλει η Γερμανία στην Ελλάδα, για τις

κατασχέσεις, αρπαγές και καταστροφές, που της προξένησε το Γ' Ράιχ,

την περίοδο της κατοχής, ύψους 7,1 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων, όπως

επεδίκασαν οι Σύμμαχοι.

ε) Στις ανυπολόγιστες υποχρεώσεις της Γερμανίας για την αφαίρεση της

ζωής 1.125.960 Ελλήνων (38.960 εκτελεσμένων, 12.000 νεκρών από

αδέσποτες, 70.000 σκοτωμένων σε μάχες, 105.000 νεκρών στα στρατόπεδα

της Γερμανίας, 600.000 νεκρών από πείνα και 300.000 απωλειών από

υπογεννητικότητα).

στ) Στην ατίμητη ηθική προσβολή, που προξένησε στον ελληνικό λαό και

στις ανθρωπιστικές ιδέες που εκφράζει η ελληνική ιδέα. Αυτό το

πρόβλημα δεν είναι οικονομικό, είναι ηθικής τάξης, ύψιστης ηθικής

αξίας.

Ξέρω Walτer, σε πειράζουν αυτά που γράφω, αλλά και μένα με πείραξαν,

αυτά που έγραψες! Αλλά περισσότερο με πειράζουν, αυτά που σκέφτεσαι

και θέλεις να κάνεις για μένα και τους «συμπατριώτες» σου, τους

Έλληνες !

Walτer, φίλτατε Walτer, στην Ελλάδα δραστηριοποιούνται 130 γερμανικές

επιχειρήσεις, στις οποίες, περιλαμβάνονται σχεδόν όλοι οι γερμανικοί

κολοσσοί, οι οποίες πραγματοποιούν ετήσιο τζίρο της τάξης των 6,5 δισ.

ευρώ.

Ξέρεις Walτer, σύντομα δε θα μπορώ ν' αγοράζω Γερμανικά προϊόντα,

γιατί δεν θάχω λεφτά. Εγώ Walτer μεγάλωσα στα λίγα, θα τ' αντέξω . και

μην ανησυχείς για τους νέους στην Ελλάδα, . είμαστε ακόμα πολλοί

παλιοί, για να τους βοηθήσουμε, να εξοικειωθούν στη νέα κατάσταση .

αλλά εσείς βρε Walτer, . τους ανέργους σας, που θα δημιουργηθούν από

την κατάσταση αυτή στην Ελλάδα, πως θα τους αντιμετωπίσετε;

Πες μου σε παρακαλώ . έχω απορία: εμείς οι Έλληνες πρέπει να φύγουμε

από την Ευρώπη, την Ευρωζώνη (κι' απ' όπου αλλού θέλετε, εσείς, οι

Γερμανοί, οι Σουηδοί, οι Ολλανδοί και λοιποί «συμπατριώτες). Πρέπει να

φύγουμε, για να σωθούμε από μια Ένωση, κατ' επίφαση. Από μια ομάδα

κερδοσκόπων. Από μια ομάδα, στην οποία είμαστε συμπαίκτες, όσο

καταναλώναμε τα προϊόντα των συμπαικτών !

Εγώ φίλτατε Walτer, πιστεύω, ότι οι Έλληνες θα πρέπει να σταματήσουν

ν' αγοράζουν Mercedes, BMW, Opel, Ford, Scoda, κλπ. συμμαχικά

προϊόντα, γιατί, . δεν μπορούν και δεν πρέπει ! ... Δεν το αξίζουν. Θα

πρέπει να σταματήσουν ν' αγοράζουν προϊόντα από το Lidl, το Praktiker

και το IKEA. Γιατί δε θα μπορούν πια να τ' αγοράσουν αυτά τα προϊόντα,

βρε αδερφέ, τι να κάνουμε !

Φίλτατε Walτer, θα πρέπει να κανονίσουμε και κάποιες άλλες

«λεπτομέρειες» . αν μου επιτρέπεις βέβαια, γιατί εσύ είσαι ο

«πιστωτής» της ζωής μου. Ξέρεις βρε φίλε Walτer, θέλω να μου

επιστρέψεις τον ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΟ μου, που έκλεψες εσύ (όχι ΕΣΥ βεβαίως, αλλά

κάποιοι ΔΙΚΟΙ ΣΟΥ), θέλω τα ΑΘΑΝΑΤΑ ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΗΜΑΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΠΡΟΓΟΝΩΝ ΜΟΥ,

που βρίσκονται στα Μουσεία του Βερολίνου, του Μονάχου, του Λονδίνου,

του Παρισιού, της Ρώμης! Τα θέλω τώρα, που μπορεί να πεθάνω, . αλλά

θέλω να πεθάνω, κοντά στους πατέρες μου !

Ε Κ Π Λ Η Κ Τ Ι Κ Ο Σ"

Talking to each other...

2010-11-29T19:36:00.023+01:00

Like everyone else I know I have already been using Skype for ages. Why not? You can VC with each other in splendid quality of both sound and image. All free if it's computer talking to computer, going over IP without any landline or cellphone operators in the chain. In earlier years, when compression algorithms and data transmission speeds were both constrained, Skype and similar tools in instant messengers (Yahoo, Microsoft, Google) were doing the job but you just couldn't claim these were the best user experience on the planet. Apple came later with iChat claiming better quality, but even that wasn't all that beautiful. In the meantime, things improved, especially data compression and streaming data speeds, and with that video and audio improved to the point of "very acceptable" by most real people. Youtube started large scale offering of (what they call) HD in different progressive rates, like 360p, 480p and (HD ready) 720p, and viewing clips in these higher resolutions improved user experience on flat screen HDTV monitors quite a bit. In the meantime, iPhones and iPads hit the market, followed by the sophisticated iPod Touch's (recently), offering similar functionality to the latest iPhones. In parallel, Skype produced a number of paid offerings where one could call any possible target line or number from a Skype enabled station, that being, a computer (desktop or portable), a dedicated Skype phone (I had that too, once upon a time, no video though possible), and the latest goodies from Apple, that is iPhones, iPod Touch (latest gen) and the iPad. Skype for iPad isn't yet out, I think, only the iPhone/iPod Touch app version that also runs on iPad. In other words, the exact same app runs on three Apple mobile devices, the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

If you own any one of those three devices, the best you can do is buy a set of earphones with an integrated mic and you are good to go. Skype offers quite a few commercial programs and I find them one of the cheapest solutions on the market. Also fee settlement is pretty straight forward and easy to do by casual users. You can even decide to allow them to add more credit automatically and avoid dropping the call during the most interesting part of the conversation, when you're about to confess to her "Honey, I love you so much, more than anything...", as it usually happens when calls drop... Also with the current iOs 4.2 multitasking available, I leave my Skype app open at all times on any of these devices, and when someone calls me, all active devices ring together in choir like regular phones do. Only problem, the calling party has got no idea that I am responding on an iPhone, iPod Touch or an iPad and before I can blink I can hear them moaning: "Turn on your camera, dude... I can't see yeah... " and more of that. ("Why do you wanna see me anyways, I look like shit and I'm in my pajamas"). You eventually tell them that you're using your phone to talk to them and they're like hit by lightening. "Gee, I didn't know you could do that?!" I just called the spouse from my loft, her being in the dining room on the ground floor on our normal landline, and me on my iPad running Skype. Connectivity was perfect and sound quality even better. I asked her, "do you know that I'm calling you with Skype from my iPad?" She's like, "No way! You must be kidding me! Cool. Continue playin' baby", she said and she hung up... The good news is that it all works smoothly like a charm.

I'm using the free for all of Europe landline program at about ten bucks a month, where I can call landlines in Europe 24x7 for the fix monthly fee I mentioned. Fair use expects subscribers to do no more than 10000 hrs a month, which is pretty descent unless you are a regular business or insanely in love with someone. I'm also sending SMSs with Skype, but the cheapest SMSs I'm doing on an iPad app called GlobalAQ. That app created a phone nr for me on the telephone zone in the country of pinguins at the South pole, and the problem is, if I send an SMS from this number, most operators won't deliver 'reply' messages... For the rest, the cost for international SMS is ridiculously low. Chickenshit really.

It goes without saying that if both parties are on Apple material and linked to internet on either side, FaceTime is your app. My best experience was recently when I was in my room with a veranda by the beach in the Grand Egnatia Hotel in Alex/Polis, Greece and my spouse was at my elder son's studio in Amsterdam. She called me on a Mac with Facetime and the call came in on my iPhone already connected to the hotel's free wifi. We talked for more than an hour, whereby I did to her a sightseeing tour of my room, the veranda and the blue Aegean breaking waves right in front of me, say 30 yards away from my room. All she said was, "why don't you stare into the camera, honey? Don't you like me anymore?". That's how women are spoilin' our gadget fun all the time, especially the married ones.

In conclusion, Facetime is better that Skype in a end-to-end IP exchange for two reasons. The app doesn't have to be activated for Facetime to work (whereas in Skype you need to be first online and then they call you). Second, Facetime offers video conferencing on Apple's iPhones and iPod Touch. Not on iPad yet though. Maybe next year when 2nd gen iPads come out with two cameras. What I'd also expect is that sooner or later Skype for iOs 4 will support video as well. I don't see why not...

VJK's Diaries

Davos WEF 2012, or, the highest density of ego's per cubic meter!

The saga continues

Heroes

Multimedia reinvented, or, how to publish in today's world.

Related articles

Of daughters and children...

Xmas market in Ghent

Oudenaarde by night, few weeks before Xmas.

A walk around Oudenaarde

In Bruges...

Let's get movi(e)ng

Wenn die Sonne der Kultur tief steht, werfen selbst Zwerge lange Schatten

Related articles

On cloud nine with Airplay...

Simply... Cards

Related articles

Delete Photos in Photo Stream... not?

The fun of updating to iOS 5...

Reuters reporting suckz !

My personal photographic homage to SJ

The last tribute by Daniel Lyons, aka Fake Steve.

One last thing: R.I.P., Steve Jobs

Only the good die young...

Thessaloniki

The age of arrogance...

The name of the game...

Related articles

Merits of uniqueness

Class of '71

Impossible is nothing

Related articles

Optomorphism

BBC's Global player

Related articles

Berlin 2011

People of Berlin... My new Photobook

A great lesson for Greek Media (MME) reps...

The insanity of demagogy

iPhoneography

Related articles

How to become a Curator real quick!

Greece cracking again?

A million tulips in Brussels, Belgium...

College students

About troikas and more...

Deleting a Facebook account... next to Mission Impossible

Gabby and her iPad.

My fellow citizens got loads of humor...

Bollywood goes bananas!

Practical Wisdom

Arab authoritarians!

Davos interviews

Terry posing with Fixed Gear bike

A Greek Tragedy

A wonderful clip

Απίστευτος διάλογος στο γερμανικό περιοδικό Stern

Talking to each other...