Mannerisms

Trucks in Europe may have to be equipped to handle ten different systems for electronic tolling, substantially increasing their cost,

The news that Skype's founders will soon launch a global 'near-HD' standard TV service over the Internet proves the point made in last week's piece HD TV over Internet that it's the newcomers to a market who see most of the game.

US companies like Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm and Rambus may moan about the EC investigations into their business practices, but they have only the US to blame for the EC's anti-trust rules.

Having just finished 'Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile', I have to agree with the author that laissez-faire capitalism has to be moderated with a fairer socio- economic system if the West is to solve its social problems.

The great thing about Gordon Brown's banning of short selling last week was that it showed he's prepared to deny the share traders some of their practices.

Being in America in the run up to a Presidential election makes you realize how very different the Americans are.

It's amazing how America throws up the right guy at the right time.

A notable feature of the recent American election campaign was the grace of the speeches by the defeated candidates, and one wonders if this is something inherited from the Red Indians.

Thanks to Doug Dickinson of Linear Tech for this piece which was  published in the US press earlier this month under the headline:  "Service Outage (a note from the USA)" via Rolling Stone : National Affairs Daily by Tim Dickinson on 1/23/09. The article reads: 

Intel's spat with the EC over whether Intel uses illegal anti-competitive business practices, seems to be getting increasingly bad-tempered.

Will there be blood in the streets by May? Well there could be if companies lay off large numbers of people, while governments keep giving huge amounts to banks which lavish it on their staff.

Who brought up these bankers? Where were they educated? They appear to have had no exposure to that most basic of human social ideas, Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract.

Fresh from Intel CEO Paul Otellini's February trip to Washington D.C. to announce a $7 billion investment programme, no doubt in the hopes of endearing Intel to the new US Administration, Intel appears to have found itself on the wrong side of the new broom sweeping the corridors of  American power.

Normally, when you're up before the beak, the rules are simple: wear your best suit and call him 'Sir'.

According to the New York Times, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has developed a new political science which has been incorporated into the country's Constitution and now governs government policy. "We need to think about gross national happiness," says Bhutan's Prime Minister.