Most of human-kind suffers under one delusion or another or several. Here are the ten worst delusions:
Barbecued food is as good as kitchen-cooked food
Golf is an interesting game
Religion spreads wisdom and goodness.
Promising to give someone half you money and that you won't sleep with anyone else (i.e. marriage) makes you happy.
Work is good for you
Responsibility brings contentment
Holidays are satisfying
House extensions increase your happiness
The more TV channels the better
The pursuit of wealth is the main purpose of life.
So you're ruling out God, love and wealth as worthwhile pursuits. Guess that leaves just beer and cricket?
Well Peter, you can pursue God but you may end up a bigot, you can pursue love but marriage can ruin it, and you can pursue wealth and end up a miser. So maybe beer and cricket (especially in an Ashes winning year) are more reliable pursuits.
OK, so what IS the meaning of life?
Well, Andrew, I thought it was 42 - according to Douglas Adams. Apart from that, I haven't a clue.
You forgot:
Government has a clue
Which government, Tom?
Well certainly not ours! I don't like any of them but I think Frau Merkel at least has the interests of industry at heart and she is numerate enough to tell when she is being BS'd by bankers.
Just reading another story on Electronics Weekly. Government announces £2.5Bn investment in high tech a year ago which turns into today's story of a £6M fund to make sure start-ups don't go short (i.e. enough to fund about half of one round of investment into a typical fabless semi company). This £6M is split into three priority areas one of which has multiple sub-categories.
Question: how many quangocrats at an average cost of say £150K/year in salary, pension, office space, travel etc does it take to run a £6M VC fund.
One to run the VC fund and a couple of hundred to order the paper-clips, Tom
Tom came close to one of mine. Here's the other:
"They're experts - they must be right!"
What about the delusion that writing blog entries unrelated to electronics are appropriate in a professional electronics website?
One might expect a list of delusions like:
"Making ever-more bloated and complex operating system and application software is more than a way for software companies to keep themselves in business and hardware companies to sell more powerful PCs to run anti virus software that makes them run slower than the previous generation".
Keith
Point 1. If people read and respond to such blog entries then, by defnition, they are appropriate to the web-site
Point 2. That, as you imply, is no delusion - it's a lucrative business strategy.
Half your money? You're getting off lightly!
Come on David, isn't working in the electronics industry depressing enough, without having to read this kind of thing? In these dark times, it would be good to have something to cheer us up: how about "10 industries with even worse pay and conditions than electronics" or "10 defunct companies who's employees won't miss them"?
Sorry to be depressing Rex. Those are tough briefs. For the first one, how about:
Nursing; Catering; Retail; Hairdressing; Gardening; Factory work; Call centre work; Journalism; Social work; Child minding. Does that make you feel any better?