Big Data is Just Data, Why Excel “Sucks”, and 1,000 Miles of Data « PowerPivotPro

Feel free to glaze over this one, Why Excel sucks. I admit I’m an Excel nerd, and this may appeal to you if you understand or have experienced the “challenges” of working with dramatically changing reporting needs & multiply source data files. Hope is at hand, if you haven’t already heard of PowerPivot.

Jane Kelsey: Hollywood lays down its own law

Across the world, Hollywod helps create the same magic with legislation as it does with entertainment. The TPP (TransPacific Partnership) is a draft piece of legislation that currently is with the governments of 11 countries, all seemingly beside themselves, happy  to oblige the authors of the legislation, with little or no public discussion about it. Here’s a critique by Jane Kelsey, who writes in the NZ Herald News that Hollywood lays down its own law.

Why the United States Is So Afraid of Huawei

Huawei emerged on the telecommunications equipment supplier scene a few years ago, & have thrown a spanner in the works for established players, mostly propped up by the heavy-handed US government, under its open markets policy. The pill is bitter to swallow, now that the roles are reversed, China wields more clout economically, & so the US Congress does what it does best: “release” a report that “warns” that Huawei & ZTE (another Chinese company) pose a “threat to US National Security“.  Of course, the report doesn’t cite ANY evidence, but relies on “experts” to say that it is possible.
A moot question then would be to ask if any US companies that have supplied telco equipment to other countries should therefore also be regarded as a national security threat.

Democracy, Capitalism, Internet

Scott Adams on Democracy, Capitalism, Internet. Indeed, the idea of “perfect markets” that economists espouse can be applied to democracy as well. The Internet is proving to be a bane in the lives of many a politician, businessman (Australian retailers are a good reference point), etc etc. as much as they are a boon to countless others.