Howard Oakley

Protection Racket

by Howard Oakley on 18 August 2010 in Help
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As the lawmakers try to patch financial and other regulations and regulators in the wake of recent banking scandals and the resulting recession, they’ve fallen into the trap that has caught almost every similar effort. Transfixed like rabbits in the headlights of oncoming trucks, they have analysed history and tried to prevent its repetition. Although [...]

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Update wake-up call

by Howard Oakley on 4 August 2010 in Help
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The story of Rip Van Winkle probably saved author Washington Irving from bankruptcy, but it was hardly original. The German folk tale Peter Klaus, the Jewish equivalent about Honi M’agel and the Chinese legend of Ranka all hinge on unnaturally long periods of sleep, and the consequences of waking up years into the future. For [...]

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Wherever you may roam

by Howard Oakley on 21 July 2010 in Help
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If the iPad is to fully capture our imaginations as a data roaming device, there has to be some unification of the European mobile markets.
This year, our annual trek to the mountains will take us to Luchon, a spa town nestling at the end of the railway line deep in the French Pyrenees.

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iBoom to iBust

by Howard Oakley on 29 June 2010 in Help
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Despite banks investing vast sums of money in computer-based models to increase their returns, they’re no more accurate than chicken entrails. By now, we’re getting used to wild swings in financial markets, such as the thousand-point collapse in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a mere half hour on 7 May. On that occasion, blame [...]

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Shaping the future

by Howard Oakley on 18 June 2010 in Help

Apple has decided to constrain iPhone/iPad developers to its own developer tools, but there’s more to this than a simple Flash snub… The howls of protest following Apple’s decision to constrain iPad and iPhone OS 4 developers to its own development tools were understandable: telling professionals they must use Objective-C or C++ is pretty insulting. [...]

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The big read

by Howard Oakley on 28 May 2010 in Help

Before electronic books can take off, a universal format that can be read on different devices needs to be agreed and implemented. It seemed a simple enough request: a well-illustrated history of painting that I can browse on both Mac and iPad. There’s no shortage of excellent printed books that would fit the bill, but [...]

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