This graphic was sent to me by its creator with an obvious viral marketing intent; but since it is both funny and informative, I said what the heck, why not? In any case, I just love that photograph of Ballmer on which he looks like a mad 1930s dictator from some wacky computer game (Zork Nemesis comes to mind).
The other day, I bought some new undershirts. It was my wife who noticed something on the label that escaped my attention: Made in Canada/Fabrique au Canada. It has been so long since I last saw such a label, I almost forgot what it looks like. The undershirts were made by Stanfields, in Nova Scotia.
I also got two books from my wife. They were both printed in the USA. What can I say… neat.
Every summer, on every Canadian TV channel, during just about every commercial break, a commercial for Marineland in Niagara Falls is shown… with a song that just drives me bonkers. I’d sooner listen to a hundred pieces of chalk scratching a hundred chalkboards. Will they ever stop?
Yesterday, Intel lost the bid for the patent assets of defunct Canadian company Nortel, despite joining forces with Google.
Google bid some odd amounts; for instance, at one point they bid $1,902,160,540.
The digits happen to be those of Brun’s constant: B2 = 1.90216058…
Brun’s constant is the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes. B2 = (1/3 + 1/5) + (1/5 + 1/7) + (1/11 + 1/13) + … According to Brun’s theorem, this sum converges. The limit of the sum is Brun’s constant.
A professor of mathematics named Thomas Nicely once used a group of computers to calculate twin primes up to 1e14, computing Brun’s constant among other things.
At one point, Nicely’s computations failed. After eliminating other sources of error, Nicely concluded that the problem was a fault in the new Pentium processors present in some recently acquired computers in the group.
Nicely notified Intel, but it wasn’t until after a public relations disaster that Intel finally responded the way they should have in the first place, offering to replace all affected processors. This cost Intel $475 million.
Who knows, if they still had that extra $475 million cash in their pockets, they could have bid more and won yesterday.
I wondered recently about Google not (yet) being evil.
If recent news are to be believed, Google decided to play hardball with the Chinese government. Good for them! I hope Google prevails, but even if they don’t, I think they should be applauded for having the guts.
Now here’s the $0.02 question (or, in the case of Google, more likely the multibillion dollar question): how long before Google’s CEO gets fired for failing to maximize shareholder value?
