Ronald's ScribblingsPosts
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Command Line Double Entry Accounting
As an accountant by training, I have always found that off-the-shelf software available in the market is somewhat lacking and inadequate for my personal accounting needs.
Software like Quicken or Microsoft Money are primarily single-entry systems. While single-entry systems are generally easier to understand, they are somewhat less robust and captures slightly less information compared to a double-entry system. In a double-entry system, each entry records the flow of monetary unit (in addition to the change in balances of 2 corresponding accounts), while in a single-entry system, each entry records the change in monetary value for that particular account.
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Apple's Astonishing Profit in Context
Statista posted a note comparing Apple’s net profit in 2012 across its various industry competitors:
How huge these numbers really are becomes more evident when compared to the results of Apple’s competition:
• From October 2011 through September 2012, the combined net profit of Microsoft, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon was $34.4 billion. Apple alone made $7 billion more.
• In the same period, Dell, Asus, Intel, Acer, IBM, Lenovo and HP, i.e. virtually the entire PC industry, made $19.3 billion or less than half of Apple’s profit.
Simply mind-blowing.
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China's Great Shame
Yang Jisheng writing for the NYTimes Opinion:
Thirty-six million people in China, including my uncle, who raised me like a father, starved to death between 1958 and 1962, during the man-made calamity known as the Great Famine. … The toll was more than twice the number of fallen in World War I, and about six times the number of Ukrainians starved by Stalin in 1932-33 or the number of Jews murdered by Hitler during World War II.
There’s a tendency for the PRC to denounce foreign aggression and claim that the PRC people are suppressed. But think about it, who are the biggest suppressors of the PRC people?
After 50 years, the famine still cannot be freely discussed in the place where it happened. … Communist leaders established a vast system of slavery in the name of liberating mankind. It was promoted as the “road to paradise,” but in fact it was a road to perdition.
Simply disgusting. The Nanjing Massacre pales in comparison to this.
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Samsung-Apple UK Judgement
Recently, Apple lost a design infringement case against Samsung and was ordered by the UK courts to post a notice on their site and media regarding Samsung’s non-infringement, including the following paragraph:
On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic (UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do not infringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High court is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.
Apple duly complied with a link on its site.
Not only did Apple include what the courts wanted them to as above, they went further and quoted from the case:
In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:
“The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back. There is a crisp edge around the rim and a combination of curves, both at the corners and the sides. The design looks like an object the informed user would want to pick up and hold. It is an understated, smooth and simple product. It is a cool design.”
“The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following. From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.”
Turns a “not as cool” statement into a marketing copy; I think it’s simply brilliant and humorous.
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