Tim O’Reilly

From Jason Kottke:

Inc. Magazine has a nice profile of Tim O’Reilly. Tim’s business philosophy is refreshing.

O’Reilly says he sometimes wonders what would have happened if he had raised venture capital and given his company a chance to get really big. But he sounds more amused by this question than truly troubled by it. “Money is like gasoline during a road trip,” he says. “You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.”

Sounds like the opposite of an awful lot of companies these days, particularly the Web 2.0 climbers.

Dear Bank of Ireland

Update 13/05: After an extended period of phone tag, I finally closed the account having accepted a €40 refund on the erroneous charges. The balance won’t come close to covering the time and frustration I’ve expended dealing with this idiocy, but I just want shot of it. Of course BOI will learn nothing from this.

CC: Richie Boucher, CEO; Mark Cunningham, Business Banking; Tim O’Neill, Branch Network; Group Credit Operations; Douglas Branch; Customer Care

Dear Person That Wouldn’t Or Couldn’t Type Their Own Name,

With reference to the attached letter, I would like to confirm that I’ll be paying every cent of the direct debits Bank of Ireland erroneously withdrew from my account, despite clear instructions not to overdraw said account when I converted an overdraft to a term loan several years ago. Amusingly, this was at Bank of Ireland’s insistence, with numerous tiresome phone calls.

I had already made one payment before the “official” you “assigned” to continue harassing me, left a message on my answering machine. I rang him shortly afterwards to inform him of this, but his phone rang out. I tried again later but I was directed to voicemail, where I left a message with my name and phone number. He didn’t call me back. (more…)

Jobs the Douche

This is why I don’t buy Apple stuff, although I fail to see why Giz appears so surprised. Apple has been obsessed with proprietary, propriety and their “privacy” since year dot, from the giant dick at the top to the “I vos just obeying ze orders” tools at the bottom. It’s just a swishy Microsoft that adds fashion-victim appeal and takes away even more freedom than MS. You bought it and bought into it, so deal with it and shut the fuck up.

Gizmodo: The censorship problem is not only about the 5,000 titillating apps that fell down in flames after Apple’s latest puritanic raid. Except for apps from well known slippery-when-wet publishing houses like Playboy, that raid closed the smutty graphic category entirely. The censorship problem goes a lot deeper than that, and it has affected mainstream publications already.