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Monday, November 24, 2014

Memorable Quotes - Part 4

A follow on from:

- Alan Shore: My, uh, best friend has Alzheimer's, in the, uh, very early stages, it hasn't... He is a grand lover of life, and will be for some time. I believe even when his mind starts to really go, he'll still fish he'll laugh and love, and as it progresses he'll still want to live because there will be value for him, in a friendship, in a cigar... The truth is I don't think he will ever come to me and say, this is the day I want to die, but the day is coming and he won't know it... This is perhaps the, the most insidious thing about Alzheimer's... but you see he trusts me to know when that day has arrive, he trusts me... to safe guard his dignity, his legacy, and self respect. He trusts me to prevent his end from becoming a mindless piece of mush and I will. It will be an unbearably painful... thing for me, but I will do it, because I love him. I will end his suffering, because it is the only decent humane and loving thing a person can do.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993804/quotes
- "We are strategic but we stop at number crunching, we plan but we don't over manage, we inspire but we don't preach, we code but we're not monkeys."
http://www.seek.com.au/Job/calling-all-super-powered-geeks-to-enlist-in-the-fight-against-corporates/in/sydney-sydney/22545415 
- It was either Otto von Bismarck or Claud Cockburn who said, "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." Whoever it was, and the internet seems a little confused on the matter, they were on to something.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/intelligent-investor/australias-most-overpaid-ceo-20130513-2jhmv.html 
- "Change is a big word that everyone is using. (United States President Barack) Obama uses it, but you have to actually feel it."
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17135873/adrian-cheng-updating-a-hong-kong-family-empire-for-a-changing-china/
- Sandschneider agrees that personal relations have an impact on political relations: "International politics is not a dehumanized process. It is about people coming together. And it is true that it is easier for two people who get along well to negotiate and solve problems than two people who can't stand each other."
http://www.dw.de/germany-is-first-on-lis-eu-list/a-16834332
- "Skeptics don't make history"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/kerry-says-us-drone-program-strict-fair/2013/05/26/80058422-c615-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.html?tid=pm_world_pop
- "Germany won," said Glasman at the debate. "We have a Champions League final between two supporter-owned and democratically governed football clubs. Tradition and the preservation of institutional virtue are a source of energy and modernisation precisely because change and continuity work together; a balance of power is the best system; a negotiated settlement is better than one that is imposed, the domination of any interest violates the demand of what is good; the discovery of the common good between forces that are estranged is the best good of all. It takes longer to get there but the benefits are more enduring."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/germany-champion-europe
- Secondly, for web site owners. Assume the entire world is out to get you. All of it; and everyone living there. It's easier that way! Do whatever you feel necessary to keep your name out of the press. Then do everything that isn't necessary, because it may-well prove to be necessary in the future. And if you're not sure what I mean, get advice, urgently.
http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/security/58893-abc-web-site-hacked-by-opponent-to-geert-wilders
- In his seminal 1931 book, Equality, R H Tawney lamented that the public did not seem resentful of the rich so much as fascinated by their goings-on. Little has changed. For most Brits, stupendous wealth has always been something that is aspired to more than resented. The post-crash fuss about the 1 per cent often seemed to be a civil dispute between its members: well-heeled activists, journalists and union chiefs castigating those who nabbed the best tables in restaurants or pushed up prices of Tuscan villas. And as successive prime ministers have realised, no government anywhere has helped the low-paid by railing against high wages.

The rich, to adapt Jesus in St Matthew's Gospel, will always be with us; the 1 per cent are likely to pull ever further away. But this has its compensations. The lower-paid half of the British populace have never had to pay a smaller share of income tax than today, because the wealthy have never forked out more. And while there is not much David Cameron can do about the rich, there is still plenty he can do about the poor. He doesn't shout about it. But he has rightly concluded that this is where his attention is best focused.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/10202546/Dont-blame-the-best-paid-1per-cent-theyre-worth-it.html
- "The problem is not ammunition, it's experience," one said, adding: "If we were fighting Americans we would all have been killed by now. They would have killed us with their drone without even needing to send a tank.

"The rebels are brave but they don't even know the difference between a Kalashnikov bullet and a sniper bullet. That weakens the morale of the men," he said.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/syria-iraq-yemen-and-afghan-jihadists-join-war-against-assad_801575.html
- Obama said that "at a time when anyone with a cellphone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button," the notion that governments can control the flow of information is obsolete.Obama said that "at a time when anyone with a cellphone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button," the notion that governments can control the flow of information is obsolete.
http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=799117
- Only about 1 in 1,000 Web readers clicks on the average display ad. On Facebook, that number is closer to 1 in 2,000, according to Webtrends. Even ads sent by unsolicited postal mail generate a response rate that is many times higher, according to published industry numbers.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-display-ads-20120525,0,4871607.story
- Famous night owls include Winston Churchill, President Obama, Charles Darwin, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Keith Richards and Elvis Presley. Famous early risers include Napoleon, Ernest Hemingway and George W. Bush.

Professor Jim Horne, of Loughborough University, said: "Evening types tend to be the more extrovert creative types, the poets, artists and inventors, while the morning types are the deducers, as often seen with civil servants and accountants.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/like-staying-up-late-you-may-be-narcissistic/article13495020/comments/
- Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
- Decades of reform. Globalisation, and the global financial crisis. The uncertainties of the post-September 11 world. Eric Knight: "Those circumstances are ripe for misinterpretation, for populist interpretation, interpretation that focuses on the surface of things and often misses the deeper logic of what's happening."
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/history-repeats-20120504-1y4ki.html
- "Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot."
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/falling-in-love
- "No one ever fell in love gracefully."
Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/falling-in-love
- "Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don't know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another's. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone else. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself."
- "Martin's dream is a vision not yet to be realized, a dream yet unfilled, and we have much to do before we can celebrate the dream as reality, as the suppression of voting rights and horrific violence...has so painfully demonstrated."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579039772530945520.html
- Love is more easily experienced than defined. As a theological virtue, by which we love God above all things and our neighbours as ourselves for his sake, it seems remote until we encounter it enfleshed, so to say, in the life of another - in acts of kindness, generosity and self-sacrifice. Love's the one thing that can never hurt anyone, although it may cost dearly. The paradox of love is that it is supremely free yet attaches us with bonds stronger than death. It cannot be bought or sold; there is nothing it cannot face; love is life's greatest blessing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/13/what-is-love-five-theories

- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
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Sunday, November 16, 2014

Writing eBooks For Profit

Over the years it's been clear that I've had a propensity for writing. What hasn't been so clear was how to monetise this. Recent research has indicated that if you're a writer it isn't as difficult as you think. If you work with standard word processors and office suites then it becomes clear that it's possible basically to just type things up, export to PDF, and then publish this.

- a good example of this are the 'Building a Cloud Computing Service', 'Convergence Effect', and 'Cloud and Internet Security' (has been cleared by Australian Intelligence Services for sensitive material so it's not a problem if you're curious) reports which are now available via Amazon and Google Play Book stores for 5 USD each (pretty decent content and research for the price to be honest. Will be curious to see how this experiment goes...)
For those who are curious here are some interesting notes:
- there are some plugins and standalone applications which will allow for this but at the end of the day you need to be able to run your book through the automated checkers to be able to get anything actually posted on to the online store
- another option could be paying someone to manually convert your chosen file. The problem is that you never know the quality of the work that you're going to get so I suggest going on your own
- most if not all stores will take a cut of what you sell
https://kdp.amazon.com/
https://play.google.com/books/publish/
- though there are other options out there if you want to sell in a different way
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-self-publish-an-ebook/
- some sites will ask for ISBN details while others will supply them for you for free
- depending on your status you may need to sign up to have a Tax File Number in the United States. There are often taxation agreements with more developed countries though
http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Taxpayer-Identification-Numbers-%28TIN%29
- many book stores will require you to use specific file formats or applications
- note that there are are many options/programs out there that will let you preview, manage, and convert your eBooks

Dodgy Job Contract Clauses, Random Stuff, and More

- in this post we'll be going through dodgy job contract clauses. Ironically, many of which are actually unlawful and unenforceable on c...