Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Just when you thought some sanity was returning to this thread! The twat is back! Happy days (not).

Beer in Asia: The drink of economic growth

Beer has been brewed in Asia for 7,000 years but it's only in the past few years that it has overtaken Europe and the Americas to become the biggest beer-drinking continent. It's also the fastest growing beer market - a sign of a young, upwardly mobile, and increasingly hedonistic population.


I don't know about anyone else, but I do my bit :-)

Purely to help the economy.. Me too Skinny, and judging by post 18122 so does Tanks.

Anybody used this outfit to buy CD's and if so are they legit, any problems Etc. http://global.rakuten.com/en/search?st=&t=new&tl=101240&t=new&k=

スタン私は、あなたが日本語を話したことを知りませんでした

Two hurricanes : "Leslie" and "Michael" and amazing pictures from space if you log on to www.noaa.gov then click satellite (tools and data), then atlantic wide view and flash...(you might need to download flashplayer from adobe.com (free download)......if both hit landfall...watch the price of crude .....

Stan,

Thanks, good to be back.

It was a very enjoyable holiday and the grandchildren enjoyed it and already asking where we can go in France next year.

What still amazes me is to having French, Dutch and German 8 and 10 year old kids who speak English with amazing fluency seeming to play and happily together.

Some in France seem to have a reasonable pace to life and happy to chat.

I will contact you next week, when the dust has settled.

========================





Alds,

Yes, you are a bit of a pest, but any decent pesticide should treat you satisfactorily.

Putin pilots hang glider to lead young endangered white Siberian cranes in flight

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, September 6, 9:14 AM

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — President Vladimir Putin has piloted a motorized hang glider to lead a flock of young Siberian white cranes in flight.

Dressed in a white costume meant to imitate an adult crane, Putin took part in a project to teach the endangered birds who were raised in captivity to follow the aircraft on their migration to Central Asia.

I wonder if we paid Putin enough would he fly over No. 10 and lead a bunch of Ostriches to Siberia.

I thought some of you might like to read the following. It's the 'up and down and up' tale of Steve Jobs, the now deceased Apple boss:

It’s easy to think that Jobs’ career began and ended with Apple. It did, but the fastest way from A to B is rarely a straight line. In Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech, he talks about ‘connecting the dots’, saying “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Here’s thirteen dots that defined the story of Steve Jobs:

DOT ONE: When Steve Jobs launched Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976, they decided to name the company after the fruit that according to legend spurred Isaac Newton’s theories on gravity. Jobs then spent most of his life defying gravity, and defying the odds.

DOT TWO: Starting with the premise that the best ideas are already out there, Jobs negotiated with Xerox to grant Apple engineers access to the Xerox PARC facilities in return for selling them one million dollars in pre-IPO Apple stock. It was from this visit that Jobs collected the ideas behind the fundamentals of today’s PC – the graphic user interface, mouse and pointer.

DOT THREE: How did Jobs go from start-up to listed company in four years? By getting his mentors to work for him. Jobs brought on a local VC, Mike Markkula, who bought shares in the company and subsequently became CEO. He brought in Regis McKenna, the best public relations man in Silicon Valley, to market the Apple II. Markkula was responsible for the early financing of the company, and for taking Apple public in 1980.

DOT FOUR: Despite becoming worth $217 million when Apple listed, Jobs kept relying purely on his intuition. Apple’s head of marketing, Mike Murray, commented, “Steve did his market research by looking into the mirror every morning.” Sales stalled, Jobs’ management style was seen by his board as a liability and, in 1985, he was thrown out of the company he had started nine years earlier.

DOT FIVE: That might have been the end of another entrepreneur story, was it not for Jobs’ perseverance. Having left Apple, he launched NeXT, to provide PCs to the education market. Apple sued Jobs for launching in competition, prompting him to say, “It’s hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300 plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans.” Jobs sold all but one of his Apple shares, and Apple continued to languish, falling from 20% market share to under 5% by 1996. Jobs, in the meantime, struggled with NeXT, burning through $250 million of investors’ money as he tried to market his new computers.

DOT SIX: In the same year that Jobs founded NeXT, George Lucas was looking to sell a small computer animation group he owned. Disney rejected an offer to buy 50% for $15 million, and a deal to sell to Ross Perot and Phillips for $30 million fell through. Jobs ended up negotiating Lucas to under $10 million for the business, thinking he could market the high-end animation computers that the group had designed.

DOT SEVEN: Renamed ‘Pixar’, Jobs’ new company began marketing the Pixar Image Computer to the medical market – with little success. By 1989, with Pixar losing over $1 million each month, and NeXT faring little better, Jobs found himself left with less than 20% of the $150 million he had received when he sold his Apple stock. At the rate he was going, within two years he would be back to zero.

DOT EIGHT: Taking drastic measures, Jobs sold the hardware side of Pixar for several million, taking a massive loss. By luck, an animated short movie the Pixar team produced in their spare time, “Tin Toy”, received an Oscar, and in 1993, Disney approved a full feature joint venture with Pixar called “Toy Story”.

DOT NINE: The victory was short lived with Disney shutting production of Toy Story down later in the year after losing confidence in the script. Then in 1994, Disney lost four executives in a helicopter crash, including Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells. Jobs was left attempting to get Toy Story back on track while also having to close the NeXT manufacturing facility and sales operation. Most of the NeXT team left. The investors, having put in another $100 million, saw that money disappear too. Toy Story, now back on Disney’s agenda, it would need to earn at least $100 million for Pixar to make any money from it at all; more than any other Disney film had made at the time.

DOT TEN: Even so, an audacious Jobs, down to his last dollar, decided to bet that not only would Toy Story be a success, it would enable him to publicly list Pixar and raise further funds. In November 1995, Toy Story opened to enormous acclaim, becoming the highest grossing release of the year, generating over $450 million in sales. One week later, Pixar had its IPO. Less than twelve months after his worst year financially, Steve Jobs was a billionaire.

DOT ELEVEN: Then, in 1996, Gil Emilio (the new CEO of Apple) went hunting for a new operating system and finally found it… in NeXT. Approaching Jobs for his system, Jobs was only interested in selling the entire company. Apple bought it for $377.5 million in cash and $1.5 million in Apple shares. In one fell swoop, Jobs could pay off all his investors and was involved with Apple again – after over ten years.

DOT TWELVE: In 1997 Apple sales were $7 billion and losses were over $1 billion. Jobs took to the challenge of revitalizing Apple. By 1998, Jobs launched the iMac, followed with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. The rise of Apple to become the most valuable company in the world are well documented, but less is known of the trials that shaped Jobs in his darker times.

DOT THIRTEEN: In January 2006, Disney (having rejected the chance to buy 50% of Pixar for $15 million ten years earlier) bought a transformed Pixar from Jobs for $7.4 billion in stock, making Jobs Disney’s largest individual shareholder and a billionaire for the third time.

To become a billionaire is already rare. To become a billionaire from scratch (or from $1 billion in losses) in three entirely different industries is unprecedented.

Jobs died with a net worth of over $8 billion after having worked for $1 a year for the last 14 years.

Many people have heard his quote “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me… Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

What most don’t know was that this was from a quote in the Wall Street Journal in Summer 1993 – Not when he was sitting on a billion dollars, but in his darkest days, outcast from Apple and the Tech community, struggling with both NeXT and an aimless Pixar, and about to run out of money.

Apple:

Looks like this summer's weather pattern may become more normal.

Arctic ice melting at 'amazing' speed, scientists find

Scientists in the Arctic are warning that this summer's record-breaking melt is part of an accelerating trend with profound implications.

Norwegian researchers report that the sea ice is becoming significantly thinner and more vulnerable.

Last month, the annual thaw of the region's floating ice reached the lowest level since satellite monitoring began, more than 30 years ago.

It is thought the scale of the decline may even affect Europe's weather.

The melt is set to continue for at least another week - the peak is usually reached in mid-September - while temperatures here remain above freezing.

Can you become more normal than normal?

Fred - as soon as I typed it, I thought that's not normal - more the norm! :-)

ExecLine

I remember selling Apple share's at a good profit at $16

Jung said, "find me a normal man and I will cure him".

He should have met Alds!

(:-)

Health and safety inspections cut in anti-red tape drive

Plans to exempt thousands of businesses from health and safety inspections are to be announced by ministers.

Under new rules to be introduced in April 2013, checks will no longer be routinely carried out on premises considered to be low risk, like shops.

Ministers say the checks can place an unnecessary burden on some businesses but some trade unions say it risks the safety of employees and customers.

The government plans to scrap or change more than 3,000 regulations.

It says its drive to cut bureaucracy will save companies millions of pounds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19474265 There certainly are some sick people about these days.

Blimey - so middle age is now 35-49!

Suicide strategy launch: Middle-aged men 'highest risk'

Middle-aged men are now the group at highest risk of committing suicide in England, statistics reveal.

Key reasons could be job or money worries due to the recession, says a new government strategy to reduce the number of suicides.