Month: March 2013

Ti gode råd, hvis din opstartsvirksomhed skal lykkes

Vi ved alle, at folks økonomiske forhold kun afhænger af deres eget initiativ, og at ægte velstand kræver hårdt og vedholdende arbejde. Så hvis du pønser på at starte egen virksomhed, hvilke ting skal du så have på plads?

Der findes ingen gylden og universel opskrift, men Anil Dash trækker på sin store erfaring med entrepenører og opregner 10 ting, som med sikkerhed vil hjælpe:

  1. Be raised with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. (Every tech billionaire I’ve ever spoken to has a toilet!)
  2. Try to be born in a region that is politically and militarily stable.
  3. Grow up with a family that is as steady and secure as possible.
  4. Have access to at least a basic free education in core subjects.
  5. Avoid being abused by family members, loved ones, friends or acquaintances during the formative years of your life.
  6. Be fluent in English, or have time to dedicate to continuously improving your language skills.
  7. Make sure there’s enough disposable income available to support your learning technology at a younger age.
  8. If you must be a member of an underrepresented community or a woman, get comfortable with suppressing your identity. If not, follow a numbingly conventional definition of dominant masculinity.
  9. Be within a narrow range of physical norms for appearance and ability, as defined by the comfort level of strangers.
  10. Practice articulating your cultural, technological or social aspirations exclusively in economic terms.

Nogle gange kan markedskræfterne og de ydre økonomiske omstændigheder selvfølgelig drille, men som listen viser, er der også virkelig mange ting, du kan gøre selv.

Endnu en familie smides ud af landet

Vi lever stadig med den kuldegysnende effekt af ti år med en regering, der gjorde hvad den kunne for at gøre det svært at være udlænding i dette land. “Kuldegysnende” er desværre det rette ord. Anders Jenbo og Anna Christine Stinson har fået besked på at forlade landet, da deres ansøgning om familiesammenføring er afvist. Udlændingestyrelsen har generøst givet dem hele ni dage til at pakke deres ting.

Læs selv Anders og Christines beretning på Facebook:

Støt Anders og Christine!Help – my wife will be deported

Sunday, March 17, 2013 my American wife and I received a letter from the Danish Immigration Service stating that they had rejected our application for family reunification. The only reason for the refusal was that in early 2011 I (Anders) borrowed 15,000DKK (roughly 2,600 USD) from the municipality. The reason for this loan was that my former employer had refused to pay my salary for several months, my savings were exhausted and even though my union had pulled me out of the workplace, I was technically not unemployed. Therefore I could not receive compensation from my unemployment insurance. I am in the process of paying off the loan and have offered to pay the remaining amount instantly.

My wife has been ordered to leave Denmark by Tuesday, March 26, 2013. The Immigration Service added in the letter that we should live our family life in the United States, as this would not be associated with “insurmountable obstacles”. My wife has lived in Denmark for over 2 years and has neither a home nor a job in the United States. I own an apartment and have a solid, full time job here in Denmark. Neither of those things are something you just get rid of on a weeks notice. We would also have to readjust to life in the United States and be separeted from family and friends here at home. We therefore appeal for your support.

Thank you and Kind Regards,
Anders Jenbo & Anna Christine Stinson

Hjælp – min kone bliver udvist

Søndag d. 17.3.13 modtog min amerikanske kone og jeg et brev fra Udlændingestyrelsen om, at de har afvist vores ansøgning om familiesammenføring. De stiller som eneste grund, at jeg i starten af 2011 lånte 15.000,- af kommunen. Årsagen til dette lån var, at min daværende arbejdsgiver havde ladet min løn udeblive i flere måneder, min opsparing var opbrugt og selvom min fagforening havde trukket mig ud var jeg teknisk set ikke arbejdsløs og kunne derfor ikke få penge udbetalt fra min a-kasse. Jeg er i fuld gang med at afbetale lånet og har tilbudt at betale hele restbeløbet med det samme.

Min kone har til på tirsdag d. 26.3.2013 til at forlade landet, og de tilføjer, at vi i stedet kan udøve familielivet i USA, da dette ikke vil være forbundet med “uoverstigelig hindringer”. Min kone har boet i Danmark i over 2 år, har hverken hjem eller job i USA, jeg har ejerlejlighed og fast arbejde her i Danmark hvilket begge ikke lige er noget man sådan skaffer sig af med på en uge, for slet ikke at tale om, at omlægge sig til amerikanske forhold og være adskilt fra familie og venner her i Danmark. Vi appellerer derfor til jeres støtte.

Mvh og tak
Anders Jenbo og Anna Christine Stinson

Du kan skrive under på, at reglerne og den aktuelle beslutning bør genovervejes.

Hvad er det nu med den lockout?

Adventures and Japes har svaret:

Main Characters:-

  • Antorini (Christine Antorini) Curly haired extra from Borgen. Antorini is the Education Minister of Denmark, also in the Social Democratic party. Teaching experience: none.
  • Bondo (Anders Bondo Christensen): Harry Potter: the elbow patch years. Bondo represents the Danish Teacher’s Union. Teaching experience: lots.
  • Corydon (Bjarne Corydon): A shaven headed extra from Breaking Bad. Corydon is the Finance Minister of Denmark. He is from the Social Democratic party (‘Moderaterne’ on Borgen, ‘Labour’ in the UK). He has a tumblr dedicated to him looking sceptical. Teaching experience: none.
  • Ziegler (Michael Ziegler) Leader of the “Borough Council Union”, a nationwide group representing the interests of the borough councils in Denmark. Teaching experience: none.

Minor Characters

  • Jelved (Marianne Jelved): Member of the Radikale Venstre party. Used to be a teacher. Is married to a teacher. Looks a bit like Sandi Toksvig’s aunt. I have met her. She has observed two of my lessons. She is okay by me. And for a politician she does not say a lot. Teaching experience: lots.
  • Vestager (Margrethe Vestager): Leader of the Radikale Venstre party (think Old Labour/Liberal mashup) and Minister for Economics. Teaching experience: none.

Chorus

  • The children: Attend schools in Denmark
  • The parents: Send their children to schools in Denmark
  • The teachers: Work at schools in Denmark
  • The taxpayers: Live in Denmark and pay for this show

Læs endelig det hele!

Luke’s Change: Death Star was an inside job

An examination of some questionable events and circumstances leading up to the destruction of the Death Star, through the eyes of an amateur investigative journalist within the Star Wars galaxy. The focus is mainly on the connections between the people who created and operated the Death Star and those responsible for destroying it.

Via Boing Boing.

Mark Shuttleworth: Ubuntu vil gøre fri software til normen

Ubuntu-projektets Mark Shuttleworth skriver i et indlæg om projektets fremtid, at formålet med at lave en brugervenlig GNU/Linux-distribution og gøre den tilgængelig overalt er at gøre fri software til reglen frem for undtagelsen – altså overalt og ikke bare på de mere tekniske områder:

Everyone that I care about in open source has a shared dream: they want free software to become the norm, not the exception. And Ubuntu is the only way I can see for that to happen, which is why I spend all my time on it, and why so many other people spend huge amounts of time on it too.

I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. ‘Linux is supposed to be hard so it’s exclusive’ is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say. People being people, there are of course smart people who hold that view.

What I’m really interested in is this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a free and open platform that is THE LEADER across both consumer and enterprise computing.

With Ubuntu (and Unity) we have that. It’s amazing. Think about it – unlike years gone by, a free software platform is actually winning awards for innovative leadership in the categories that count: mobile, cloud. Investing your time and energy here might have a truly profound impact on the world. That’s worth digging into. Just roll your eyeballs at the 1337 crowd, roll up your sleeves, find something interesting to improve, and join in. To the extent that you can master a piece, you will get what you want. If you think the grand vision should follow your whims, you won’t.

If we work hard, and work together, Ubuntu will become a widespread platform for phones, tablets and PCs. You’ll have the satisfaction of designing, building and fixing tools that are used every day by millions of people. That’s meaningful. And it’s worth looking hard at our practices to ask the question: how best to achieve that goal? Of those practices, interim releases are just as subject to evaluation and revision as any other.

Du kan læse mere om fri software og Ubuntu her. Det interessante er, at projektet synes at om ikke ligefrem lykkes (proprietære systemer som Windows og Apples OSX er desværre stadig mere udbredte) så dog at omdefinere, hvad det er muligt at gøre med computere i disse år.

Hugo Chávez spildte sit lands rigdom på de fattige, selv om han kunne have bygget verdens højeste skyskraber

Hugget fra fair.org:

One of the more bizarre takes on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death comes from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):

Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.

That’s right: Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre. What kind of monster has priorities like that?

Venezuelan Poverty RateSouce: NACLA’s Keane Bhatt

In case you’re curious about what kind of results this kooky agenda had, here’s a chart (NACLA, 10/8/12) based on World Bank poverty stats–showing the proportion of Venezuelans living on less than $2 a day falling from 35 percent to 13 percent over three years. (For comparison purposes, there’s a similar stat for Brazil, which made substantial but less dramatic progress against poverty over the same time period.)

Of course, during this time, the number of Venezuelans living in the world’s tallest building went from 0 percent to 0 percent, while the number of copies of the Mona Lisa remained flat, at none. So you have to say that Chavez’s presidency was overall pretty disappointing–at least by AP‘s standards.

Dette er helt klart en fejl, som Helle Thorning-Schmidt og Margrethe Vestager aldrig ville have begået.