Michael Seufert

Michael Seufert, deputado à Assembleia da Republica pelo CDS-PP, avançou hoje ao SAPO Notícias que o partido que representa não vai apoiar o projeto de Lei da Cópia Privada, do Partido Socialista, em discussão na …

That’s Ronald Reagan, just before being shot by John Hinckley outside the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. The man in the white raincoat is Secret Service agent Jerry Parr; after the shooting, it was Parr who pushed Reagan into a limousine…

A Parisian commercial court has upheld a lower court's ruling against Google France, ordering the company to pay a fine of €500,000 for giving away its maps services. The plaintiff, Bottin Cartographes, claims that Google leveraged the market share of its Maps platform — and the fact that it’s free — to undercut and stifle competition attempting to sell their topographical wares to businesses. “We proved the illegality of [Google's] strategy,” said Bottin’s counsel, noting that this was the first time Google has been convicted of malfeasance for this particular piece of software in the country. A representative from the search giant said it plans to appeal the decision, and reiterated the company’s belief that competition exists in the space. Personally, we think the court got it right. Why should people get an awesome product for free when they can pay for an inferior one, right?

French court fines Google France 500,000 euros for gratis Maps originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In June 1744, the College of William & Mary invited the Indians of the Six Nations to send 12 young men to be “properly” educated. They received this reply:

We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that…

No último mês de Dezembro, Miguel Sousa Tavares publicou um artigo laudatório do antigo Primeiro-Ministro José Sócrates, com o título O Fantasma de Paris,  que tem sido replicado em vários blogues socratistas. Raras vezes vi um artigo com tanto…

My Jan. 28, 2012 Sun column;Toe-to-toe with GreenpeaceComments reveal why group prefers stunts to debateGreenpeace is pretty good at stunts — it’s their trademark.Sometimes it’s jokes, sometimes it’s criminal breaking and entering. Like when they bro…

Fados lisboetas. Por João Pereira Coutinho.
O governo prepara-se para acabar com o 1º de Dezembro e o 5 de Outubro e o edil António Costa já avisou: Lisboa continuará a festejar a implantação da República. Não se esperava outra atitude. Se vir…

Lizzy Grant lançou um álbum em 2010 que não levantou ondas. Hoje Lana Del Rey, a autora comprou os direitos de autor do seu primeiro álbum e vai relançá-lo daqui a dois dias. A estratégia com a nova editora passou por uma renovação total da im…

Create Value, Not Jobs:

Public discourse on matters of the economy is and has always been dominated by the idea that the road to prosperity is to create jobs. In a moment of high unemployment, the “create jobs” rhetoric becomes that much more prevalent. We get a “Jobs Bill“; opponents of Obama’s reform call it “job destroying“; after a brief period of discussing deficits and debt national news outlets turned right back to talking about jobs.

The point is, our goal should never be to “create jobs”. Our goal should be to enable people to contribute something valued by other people. The value is the point, not the work. If someone finds a way to provide value to hundreds of millions of people and it requires no more effort from them than batting their eyelashes, that would be a win.

This is not a matter of semantics. If you think the problem is a lack of jobs, all sorts of dangerous “solutions” may come to mind. Anything from having the government hiring en masse to do make-work, valueless jobs, to setting high tariffs and immigration restrictions so that domestic companies and labor do not have any foreign competition.

.. Yes, there would be more “work” to do if we cut off trade and immigration, but it would also impoverish just about everyone as the cost of getting anything would skyrocket. Getting a job is not an end unto itself; the whole point is to trade our labor for other things that we want. Getting a job at the cost of not being able to afford anything is an absurd proposition.

But we need to get our priorities straight; what we want to do is help people create value. Unless giving someone a job will enable them to create more value than it costs, the existence of that job is counterproductive.

How well can you communicate over email? (or blog posts? how about in person?):

Without the benefit of paralinguistic cues such as gesture, emphasis, and intonation, it can be difficult to convey emotion and tone over electronic mail (e-mail). Five experiments suggest that this limitation is often underappreciated, such that people tend to believe that they can communicate over e-mail more effectively than they actually can. Studies 4 and 5 further suggest that this overconfidence is born of egocentrism, the inherent difficulty of detaching oneself from one’s own perspective when evaluating the perspective of someone else. Because e-mail communicators “hear” a statement differently depending on whether they intend to be, say, sarcastic or funny, it can be difficult to appreciate that their electronic audience may not.